Robert Coover: Huck Out West

The latest addition to my website is Robert Coover‘s Huck Out West. This is another wonderfully post-modern, iconoclastic, very funny book from Robert Coover. It tells the story of Huckleberry Finn and, to a certain degree, of Tom Sawyer, when they become adults and head out to the Wild West. Finn remains the loveable but somewhat naive and unambitious rogue, essentially decent and trying to do what is best. We follow him as he struggles with General Custer, the Lakota Indians, the Black Hills gold rush and even the Civil War. All he wants is some booze and to be left in peace, with a few friends. Sawyer, however, is ruthless, dishonest, ambitious and devious (possibly based, at least in part, on Donald Trump). Coover thoroughly demythologises both Tom Sawyer and the Wild West but has great fun doing so and leaves us with a wonderful post-modern novel – written at the age of eighty-four.

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