House Made of Dawn [50th Anniversary Ed]: A Novel (P.S.)

A while back a teacher and friend asked me: “What I wonder is, to what extent is Momaday a man of words on account of his adherence to his Kiowa side (the way Stegner adhered to his Norwegian side), and to what extent is he a man of words because he is a literary man? There is no doubt the genesis of the word-man comes from the native side, which mainlines right into that great sermon in House Made of Dawn, preached from the text, "In the beginning was the Word."Here are a couple of extracts from the great sermon referenced:“… in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." … it was the Truth, all right, but it was more than the Truth. The truth was overgrown with fat and the fat was God. The fat as John's God and the fat stood between John and The truth.” …“In the white man’s world, language, too—and the way in which the white man thinks of it—has undergone a process of change. The white man takes such things as words and literatures for granted, as indeed he must, for nothing in his world is so commonplace. On every side of him there are words by the millions, an unending succession of pamphlets and papers, letters and books, bills and bulletins, commentaries and conversations. He has diluted and multiplied the Word, and words have begun to close in upon him. He is sated and insensitive; his regard for language—for the Word itself—as an instrument of creation has diminished nearly to the point of no return. It may be that he will perish by the word." (pp. 82-4)I’m going to try and back into an answer.First, House Made of Dawn is exceptional. It tells many stories, but Abel is the character at core. Although the book speaks of more than one place, the central place is Jemez, New Mexico. Abel is a composite of many American Indians. But, he is more than that. He is a WWII veteran who saw combat and there is enough in the way of flashback to recognize what we now call PTSD. He is a man who learns from his family and extended family. He suffers alcoholism and alienation. He loves and is loved by his grandfather. He knows women intimately. He suffers, is abused, kills, and is beaten almost to death. In short, he is portrayed in enough depth that it is easy to identify and empathize with him. Could a character like Abel have existed in other circumstances, i.e. outside of the Native American culture? Yes, suffering, alienation and abuse are common enough themes. Momaday has stated that Abel is a composite character based on people he knew. The literary man, Momaday, drew on his experience to draw his character. AND, by reading Momaday’s recounting of Abel’s past I can more easily identify with Guy Sajer’s The Forgotten Soldier and perhaps even my own father’s experience on Guadalcanal. Yes, Kiowa, but so much more than that.Second, Momaday is – by his own description – a poet. And, I seem to recall that he has suggested at least once that House Made of Dawn is an extended poem. When I read passages like this:“But the great feature of the valley was its size. It was almost too great for the eye to hold, strangely beautiful and full of distance. Such vastness makes for illusion, a kind of illusion that comprehends reality, and where it exists there is always wonder and exhilaration. He looked at the facets of a boulder that lay balanced on the edge of the land …” (p. 16)I read it sparely with pauses as with poetry:“The great featureof the valleywas its size.almost too greatfor the eye to hold,strangely beautifulfull of distance.vastness makes for illusion,illusion that comprehends reality,where it exists …”I’ve read several interviews with Momaday. One that sticks with me is done by Matthias Schubnell. They had been talking about Emily Dickinson whom Momaday describes, perhaps lovingly, as “nearly infinite in her expression” with “a kind of regard for language that a great writer must have…. I think her survival was largely intellectual.” Schubnell follows up with this: “And you see that function of creative work as a way to accommodate life in your own case?” Momaday responds: “Yes, and more and more so. … I believe that I fashion my own life out of words and images and that’s how I get by. If I didn’t do those things, I think that I would find my existence a problem of some sort. Writing gives expression to my spirit and to my mind, that’s a way of surviving of ordering one’s life. That’s a way of living, of making life acceptable to oneself.” *I’m not sure I have answered my friend’s question. I’m not sure he was looking for a definitive answer. I miss being in his seminar, where I first read Momaday.Not quite finished (I do go on), one more observation. I’ve sort of read Momaday backwards. I started with more recent Momaday works including: Rainy Mountain, The Man Made of Words and In the Bear’s House. In the Bear’s House is my favorite. It is a mature Momaday and it is just absolutely beautiful writing. It is, in my opinion, magical and it is Momaday at the height of his power with words. Momaday wrote House made of Dawn over two years when he was in his early thirties. He wrote In the Bear’s House at 65. Reading these too books and considering differences in Momaday’s age brings to mind these words from the Analects:“At fifteen I set my heart on learning; at thirty I took my stand; at forty I came to be free from doubts; at fifty I understood the Decree of Heaven; at sixty my ear was attuned; at seventy I followed my heart’s desire without overstepping the line.” ***Conversations with N. Scott Momaday, ed. Matthias Schubnell. P. 84** Analects, Book II, Chap 4

I learned about the author on an “American Masters” documentary, “Words from a Bear” that portrayed him as a voice of Native American Renaissance in art and literature, which led to a breakthrough of Native American literature into the mainstream. Like many Americans, my awareness of the Native American was raised by historian Dee Brown’s 1970 best-selling book, “Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee,” which told about the massacre of several hundred Lakota Indians (mostly women and children) by soldiers of the U.S. Army. The author was brought up around places I’d lived and worked in Oklahoma, New Mexico and Arizona, and this book had received a Pulitzer Prize for Literature.The main character, Abel, has come home to New Mexico from war only to find himself caught between two worlds. The one world is modern and industrial, claiming his soul and leading him into a destructive, compulsive cycle of depravity and despair. The author expresses a wariness of the white man’s world and language,On every side of him, there are words by the millions, an unending succession of pamphlets and papers, letters and books, bills and bulletins, commentaries and conversations. He has diluted and multiplied the Word, and words have begun to close in upon him. He is sated and insensitive; his regard for language—for the World itself—as an instrument of creation has diminished nearly to the point of no return. It may be that he will perish by the Word.Alcoholism is often a part of the despair Abel experiences,He had gone out the first and second days and got drunk. He wanted to go out on the third, but he had no money and it was bitter cold and he was sick and in pain. He had been there six days at dawn, listening to his grandfather’s voice. He heard it now, but it had no meaning. The random words fell together and made no sense.In contrast, his grandfather would orient him to the rhythm of the seasons, the harsh beauty of the Southwest, and the ancient rites and traditions of his people.These things he told his grandsons carefully, slowly and at length, because they were old and true, and they could be lost forever as easily as one generation is lost to the next, as easily as on old man might lose his voice….And he knew they knew, (his grandsons) and he took them with him to the fields and they cut open the earth and touched the corn and ate sweet melons in the sun.Considered by some as the “dean” of Native American writers, he was proficient in fiction, poetry, painting and printmaking. He’s used his familiarity with Native American life and legend with the modern world, building a bridge between the two. He described this as follows,“I lived on the Navajo reservation when I was little. And I lived on two of the Apache reservations, and lived at the Pueblo of Jemez (west of Santa Fe, New Mexico) for the longest period of time…I had a Pan-Indian experience as a child, even before I knew what that term meant.”In an interview in the American Poetry Review, he recalls, “I saw people who were deeply involved in their traditional life, in the memories of their blood. They had, as far as I could see, a certain strength and beauty that I find missing in the modern world at large. I like to celebrate that involvement in my writing.”In 1958, Momaday received his BA degree from the University of New Mexico and entered the graduate program at Stanford University, where the celebrated critic, poet and scholar, Yvor Winters, had first selected Momaday as the year’s only creative writing fellow in poetry and would become the aspiring poet’s advisor. He went on to get his PhD, and in 1962, he received the Academy of American Poets prize for his poem, “The Bear.”He’d become an associate professor of English and comparative literature at the University of California, Berkeley where he designed a graduate Indian studies program and developed a course in Indian oral tradition, which has been taught ever since at Berkeley, Stanford and the University of Arizona. For twenty-nine years, he’d be a consultant to the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts.The New York Times Book Review found this book, “as subtly wrought as a piece of Navajo silverware.” And I’d agree with the critique of this book from The Paris Review, “both a masterpiece about the universal human condition and a masterpiece of Native American literature.”

Der Roman erzählt mehrere Jahre im Leben des Kriegsheimkehrer Abel in stark fragmentierte Weise in Gedankenströmen und auf unterschiedliche Charaktere focusiertem indirekt freien Stil. Dabei wechseln blumig-poetische Passagen mit eher naturalistisch-faktischen, aus verschiedenen Perspektiven beleuchtet wird die Frage, ob und wie es möglich ist zwischen den Kulturen amerikanischer Ureinwohner und der Mehrheitsgesellschaft ein glückliches Leben zu führen. Für Abel: Ist es nicht möglich. Die soziale Situation in den Reservaten der Nachkriegszeit wird eindringlich geschildert, der Roman gilt als eine der besten Vergegenwärtigung der Rituale der Navajo. Leicht zugänglich ist das alles nicht. Die Darstellungsweise macht mindestens eine zweite Lektüre fast zwingend notwendig, mag sein, dass ich nach dieser den Abzug für die doch auf den ersten Blick erzählerisch abfallenden späteren Passagen des Textes revidiere.

Consigliato assolutamente, soprattutto se cercate qualcosa di poetico e non con la solita trama da seguire.

Il libro è di grande valore letterario e umano. Più poesia che prosa. Trama difficile da decifrare in un contesto di paesaggi indimenticabili.Suggerisco la lettura a persone di lettura lenta, riflessiva, che vogliono gustarsi il libro e non sentono l'urgenza di seguire una trama narrativa e di "sapere come va a finire."Un vero "livre de chevet"

His storytelling gives the reader an intimate view of his native culture.

a beautifully crafted story