Some critics questioned why the N-word was unacceptable in Huck Finn but OK in the works of Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin and Toni Morrison.

FORBES: New Edition Of 'Huck Finn' To Eliminate N-Word -- For The Children

In one sense, McCandless was no different than Thoreau at Walden Pond, or Huck Finn in his raft on the Mississippi, or Jack Kerouac on the road.

BBC: Call of the wild

He remembers his father telling him stories about Huck Finn, Zorro, and Spider-Man, and letting him draw in church, which he managed by holding a pen with both hands.

NEWYORKER: A Pickpocket��s Tale

Moreover, as Fiedler observed even more controversially these bromantic pairings tend to involve a young white man and a man of color: Huck Finn and Jim, Ishmael and Queequeg, Natty Bumbo and Chingachcook.

FORBES: Bromance and the American Novel