Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

Huck Out West: A Novel
Huck Out West: A Novel
Huck Out West: A Novel
Audiobook9 hours

Huck Out West: A Novel

Written by Robert Coover

Narrated by Eric Michael Summerer

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

()

About this audiobook

At the end of Huckleberry Finn, on the eve of the Civil War, Huck and his pal Tom Sawyer "light out for the Territory" to avoid "sivilization." In Robert Coover's vision of their Western adventures, Huck and Tom start by joining the famous but short-lived Pony Express. Tom becomes something of a hero and decides he'd rather own civilization than escape it, returning east to get a wife and a law degree. But Huck stays alone in the Territory; he guides wagon trains, scouts for both sides in the war, wrangles horses on a Chisholm Trail cattle drive, joins a bandit gang, finds an ill-fated pal in an army fort and another in a Lakota Sioux tribe, and eventually finds himself in the Black Hills just ahead of the 1876 Gold Rush. In the course of his adventures, Huck reunites with Tom, Jim, and Becky Thatcher and faces some hard truths and harder choices.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateJan 10, 2017
ISBN9781681683829
Huck Out West: A Novel

Related to Huck Out West

Related audiobooks

Coming of Age Fiction For You

View More

Related articles

Reviews for Huck Out West

Rating: 3.657142834285714 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

35 ratings7 reviews

What did you think?

Tap to rate

Review must be at least 10 words

  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    (Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)For the first two-thirds of its running time, Robert Coover's new Huck Out West can only be called a perfect novel, which is why it came close to being the first book of the year to score a perfect 10 here at CCLaP. Or to be more specific, it succeeds perfectly at what it's aiming to do, which is to read and feel like a long-lost new chapter in the Tom Sawyer/Huckleberry Finn saga by Mark Twain, which to remind you consists not only of the original two volumes of "Adventures" themselves, but also two largely forgotten sequels that Twain himself wrote in his elderly years, 1894's Tom Sawyer Abroad (a parody of Jules Verne's fantastical novels) and 1896's Tom Sawyer, Detective (in which Sawyer serves as a Matlock-style combination PI and lawyer, to both defend his uncle when unfairly accused of murder and to figure out who the real killer is).It's surprisingly difficult to write a contemporary novel in the spirit of Twain's originals, as the hundreds of unread, mediocre attempts filling the dusty back shelves of your local library attest. (With these characters now being in the public domain, much like Sherlock Holmes, there is now a veritable cottage industry of "unauthorized Twain sequels" that now exist.) But if anyone can do it, it would be the now 85-year-old (!) Coover, an obscure but revered figure in the literary world; alum of the University of Chicago during its Mid-Century Modernist artistic height (the same years Saul Bellow and Philip Roth were there), former teacher at the Iowa Writers Workshop, and famed contributor to such countercultural lit mags as The Evergreen Review, Coover has made a long career out of clever pastiches and boldly experimental works, along the way racking up everything from an NEA Grant to a Guggenheim Fellowship to a National Book Award nomination.It's this pedigree that allows Coover to get Huck Out West so exactly right in tone for the vast majority of its length; not too treacly yet not too mean, funny and irreverent yet with a subtle political agenda running underneath it all, with a delightful relationship with wordplay but never letting that get in the way of telling the story itself. It's a subtle and difficult balance that even Twain himself didn't get right until his 1884 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which is why it wasn't until then that he started getting called the "first grand master of the true American literary arts." (His earlier Adventures of Tom Sawyer, from 1876 nearer the beginning of his career, is more a straightforward tale of childhood nostalgia for an idealized frontier that never actually existed, well-written but not containing that dark political edge that made his later work so admired and famous.) And Coover nails it perfectly for the first two-thirds of Huck Out West, setting his own book in the eventful years between the end of the Civil War (1865) and the US Centennial (1876), taking our now twentysomething heroes and depositing them in the middle of "The Territories" (present-day North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, etc); where Huck in particular becomes a sort of Victorian-Age Forrest Gump, in which among other things he serves as a rider for the Pony Express, becomes an honorary member of the Lakota tribe, almost joins up with the Jesse James gang, briefly acts as an Indian scout for a psychopathic George Custer, and is around to witness the gold rush that leads to the formation of the infamous "Wild West" town of Deadwood.In a way, then, it's a real shame that Coover finally gets this balance wrong in the last third of the novel, and like many contemporary authors starts tilting too far into 1970s-Postmodernist-style politically-correct "shocking for shock's sake" historical revisionism: by the end of Huck Out West, Tom Sawyer has turned into a racist, wife-beating, crooked-sheriff villain, his estranged wife Becky Thatcher has become a mining-town prostitute to make ends meet, huge chunks of pages are devoted to Native American mythology tales, and the establishment of Deadwood becomes an unending daily horror show of torture and violence worthy of a Cormac McCarthy tale. I mean, I like Cormac McCarthy, don't get me wrong, but I like him precisely because his revisionist Westerns are very explicitly meant to be revisionist, and not even for a moment are you expected to believe that a book like Blood Meridian had actually been written back in the 1800s; but with Cooper's goal here being to trick us into believing that this is a long-lost novel by Twain himself, and largely succeeding in that for the majority of the book's length, that makes it disappointing when he veers into Dances With Wolves territory at the very end.In another way, though, it's pretty astonishing that the first two-thirds of Huck Out West came out as well as it did, especially considering that most people Coover's age now spend their time watching 16 hours a day of Fox News and screaming about how The Muslims Are Coming To Convert Your Children And Take Your Job. If this is the last book that Coover will ever write -- and let's face it, it might very well be -- then it's a fine capper to a long and fascinating career, with the remarkable thing being not that he got the tone a bit wrong at the end but that he got it so right during all the rest. Although not perfect, it still comes very strongly recommended today, a great example of an author getting the concept of "pastiche" exactly right, and a true reading delight for any fan of Twain's original books on the same subjects.Out of 10: 9.8
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Most of us who have read “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” remember that Huck plans to "light out for the Territory" at the end. And then what? Mark Twain's ending practically begs for a sequel, and all these years later Robert Coover finally provides one in his 2017 novel ”Huck Out West.”It's not just Huck who heads out west, but Jim, Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher as well, each of them crossing paths now and then. Tom and Becky actually get married, but it doesn't last. Tom still has big dreams and grand ambitions and hasn't lost that ability to talk people into almost anything. Becky turns to whoring. Jim finds religion and becomes a cook on a wagon train.As for Huck, he remains something of an innocent, still uneducated but wiser and a better person than he thinks he is. Now that slavery has been outlawed, his new guilty friendship is with an Indian named Eeteh, ostracized by his tribe yet hated by white settlers as well. The latter, Tom included, want to kill him on sight. Huck remains torn between loyalty to his old pal, Tom, and his affection for Eeteh. He hates to admit that Eeteh may actually be the better friend.With language that includes words like ruinder, sadfuller and possibleness, Coover's Huck sounds a lot like Twain's, yet somehow Coover himself doesn't sound much like Twain. We are never convinced that this is the sequel Twain would have written, nor is it told in the way Twain would have told it. Still it's quite a story.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Sits nicely beside Bergers' Little Big Man and McBrides' The Good Lord Bird.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    In Huck Out West author Robert Coover continues the story of Huckleberry Finn by following him on his Western journeys. We learn that Huck has been having adventures, among them was working as a Pony Express rider, hunting buffalo, guiding wagon trains and living with the Lakota Sioux. At times Huckleberry is with his childhood friend, Tom Sawyer. While these characters are much like they were as youngsters with Huck having retained his decency and innocence, the crafty, clever and self-serving Tom Sawyer has lost his charm is now a manipulative and rather untrustworthy scoundrel. Many other characters from the two books about these boys make an appearance as well.Although these characters are familiar, the author’s purpose seems less in continuing the legend of Huckleberry than in exposing the truth behind how and why the incoming Americans ignored the previous treaties that had been set with the Lakota over the Black Hills. Once gold had been discovered there, the Americans quickly sought to discard the treaties, take control and remove or murder the Lakota. We now know that these depredations eventually ended up in the confrontation at the Little Bighorn in 1876. The book reminded me a great deal of Little Big Man by Thomas Berger, as Huck wanders around and is involved in incidents with the Indians, bandits, immigrants, prospectors and the army. Although not specifically named, there is a long haired general that Huck calls General Hard Ass that shows up a number of times and every time he appears, the news is not good for Huckleberry. As the drifter Huckleberry Finn continues his search for freedom, Huck Out West serves as both a homage and a sequel to Mark Twain’s original work as well as a satire about the cost of America’s determination to extend it’s borders. I believe that Mark Twain would have enjoyed this book, I know that I certainly did.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    I could not engage with this one. After Huck lit out for the territories, he had a bunch of pointless adventures; found out Jim had been sold back into slavery; watched a mass hanging of native Americans where he serendipitously met up with Tom Sawyer again (Tom hasn't changed a bit, except for being less likeable as an adult); worked for Custer (referred to only as "Gen'l Hard Ass") for a while and couldn't stomach his brutality; ran across Ben Rogers who promptly got himself killed; lost another new friend; drove cattle for a while; and contemplated helping a captive girl escape her father, who she said intended to sell her to the Mormons as an "extry wife". And that's all in the first 85 pages or so. Huck's voice doesn't feel quite right, and he's not particularly interesting now that's he's grown up and lost his innocence. In fact, the whole thing was boring me senseless. I quit.1 star for the cover art.November 2018
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I was disappointed in this novel that purported to give us a vision of Mark Twain’s, Huckleberry Finn as an adult in the Old West. Now, it’s been a long time since I read Twain’s book, but I just didn’t get the feeling that this new book captured the essence of Twain’s, Huck Finn. There was an over abundance of the aw shucks, and gall darn, vernacular, but I didn’t really feel the heart of Huck was there. If the author was trying to emulate Twain’s writing, I don’t think he quite achieved his goal. Admittedly Twain is a very high goal to aim for, but from my point of view, this was just not on target.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I received a free advance e-copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. What a wonderful continuation of the story of Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer as they continue their adventures with the Pony Express and look for gold as they travel west. They split up for a time when Tom goes back East. Apparently gold and adventure in the West is calling Tom and they team up again later in the story. This book is very well written closely following the dialogue, language, and dialect that Mark Twain used as he wrote the original adventures of Huck and Tom. Robert Coover does a great job of bringing Huck to life. Huck is constantly getting into one troublesome predicament after another and the reader wonders if and how he will be able to get out of them. Also the author introduces us to Becky Thatcher’s new profession that she took up as she followed Tom west. We also find out what became of Jim. The characters are well developed and the plot is appropriate for Huck’s future adventures. This is a very enjoyable piece of nostalgia and well worth the read. I look forward to reading more adventures about Huck, Tom, and Becky.