The American West and the Redemption of Huckleberry Finn in Phong Nguyen’s The Adventures of Joe Harper and Robert Coover’s Huck Out West

Abstract:This article examines how two novels, Phong Nguyen’s The Adventures of Joe Harper (2016) and Robert Coover’s Huck Out West (2017), revisit the controversial ending of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by imagining Tom Sawyer as an embodiment of the savagery of Manifest Destiny. It explores how these novels try to redeem the character of Huckleberry Finn by rejecting Tom and embracing reparative forms of storytelling like Native American and hobo oral narrative, both of which are pacifist and open-ended in comparison to the jingoistic, bombastic, and injurious nationalism of Manifest Destiny. Other topics covered include the cultural politics of the “minor character” novel, adaptation, moral injury, and the representation of race and identity in both novels.