In the Bear's House (review)

N. Scott Momaday is the unequivocal elder statesman of Native American literature. With over a dozen books under his belt, he is given credit for kicking off the so-called Native American Renaissance with the publication of his debut novel, House Made of Dawn, in 1968, winning the Pulitzer the following year. Momaday's father was a Kiowa artist and his mother a crossblood Cherokee teacher. Kiowa traditional stories and culture have always been a prodigious influence upon his work and self-concept, along with that of the Pueblos and Navajos that he absorbed while he and his parents lived on southwestern Indian reservations.

In the Bear's House includes ten dramatic dialogues between God (Yahweh) and Bear (Urset), nineteen poems, and two prose pieces Momaday calls "Passages," all of which involve Bear in one way or another. Amongst the literary pieces are striking and evocative illustrations produced by Momaday himself. Though slim, the book is an oversized treat for the eyes and will appeal to readers both young and old. It will also appeal to both scholars of Native American literature and more casual interested readers. With a newly designed dust jacket, visionary ursine art, a gorgeous layout with plenty of white space, and an attractive binding, the book is a beautiful object in itself. Along the way, Momaday deals with the power of words and storytelling: Kiowa traditional stories, the difference between oral and written narratives, and the mythical aspects of common subjects such as the sport of baseball. He also explores prayer, dreams, food, and other topics that have broad cross-cultural appeal.

Throughout his career, Momaday has consistently engaged the figure of Bear. Fascinated with Kiowa Bear stories, Momaday makes them a crucial part of his Kiowa self-imagining and his vision of himself as a writer. Bear emerges in Momaday's works of autobiography, poetry, and fiction. Momaday's Kiowa name, Tsoai-talee, means Rock-Tree Boy and refers to the Kiowa story of a boy who changes into a bear. In his transmogrification the boy terrifies his sisters, who are able to ascend a rising tree and escape brother-bear. The stump of this tree is what European American settlers would later call Devil's Tower in Wyoming. "Through the power of stories and names, I am the reincarnation of that boy," Momaday writes in his introduction to In the Bear's House. Momaday tells this story again in the prose narrative "The Transformation," collected here. For Momaday, Bear is a representative of wilderness and nature, but so much more.

He is a healing figure who negotiates the human and bear worlds. He is a liminal figure who is anthropomorphic yet radically other. Momaday identifies with the bear and seems to have experienced becoming the bear; such shape-shifting, rooted in tribal storytelling, is a familiar trope throughout his work. In The Ancient Child, a novel published in 1989, the same year of the original publication of In the Bear's House, Momaday created a protagonist named Set (short for Locke Setman), the Kiowa word for Bear, who figuratively becomes a bear. In Bear's House he names his mythical Bear Urset, or the Ur-Bear, Original Bear. Fittingly, Urset is also a writer who forms inscriptions with his sharp claws.

The poetry section might be the strongest area, inaugurated by Momaday's signature poem "The Bear," a lambent work that has been reprinted several times since its composition in 1963. "The Blind Astrologers," written in 1994, is a profound and atmospheric poem that closes: "When they take their leave they fade / through planes and prisms of rain" (61). On the same theme, "Ursa Major" (1995) is a perfect stellar poem of three quatrains that forms a brief conversation between the speaker and God. The poetry seems more carefully crafted and is more aesthetically pleasing than the lesser dialogues.

The dialogues between Yahweh and Urset are on the whole enjoyable but somewhat uneven. At their best they are profound and oracular, at...