In the Bear's House (review)

Originally published in 1999 by St. Martin's Press, N. Scott Momaday's In the Bear's House brings together verbal and visual art representing one of the central images in the Kiowa author/painter's work. Bear, associated with the "spirit of wilderness," has figured in Momaday's writing since his earliest publications and has continued to appear in his poetry, memoirs, and fiction (xi). Momaday strongly identifies with Bear as do many of the characters whom he incorporates throughout his body of work.

This volume consists of three parts. "The Bear-God Dialogues" contains ten conversations between the creator figure Yahweh and Urset, the "original bear" who "comes directly from the hand of God" (xi). The latter's name combines Latin and Kiowa roots meaning bear, and he interacts with his creator on subjects ranging from berries to baseball and extending to abstract and spiritual matters such as story and time. The second section of the book is comprised of nineteen poems. These include "The Bear," one of Momaday's most well-known poems, written while he was at Stanford University in 1963, as well as a number of newer works, several of which derive from his experiences in Russia. The book's final section, titled "Passages," presents two brief selections from Momaday's novels: Francisco's bear hunt, which is one of the memories the dying elder recalls at the end of House Made of Dawn (1968); and Locke Setman's transformation into Bear, which concludes The Ancient Child (1989). The latter selection contains the origin myth of Tsoai (rock tree), which Euroamericans know as Devil's Tower. Momaday, of course, has incorporated that myth into other works including The Way to Rainy Mountain (1969). Throughout the book appear examples of Momaday's visual art, depictions of Bear in the bold, sweeping strokes which characterize Momaday's paintings.

What is to be gained by gathering this material, almost half of which is available elsewhere in Momaday's oeuvre, into a single volume? The newer pieces such as the dialogues between Yahweh and Urset afford Momaday the opportunity to explore explicitly some of the themes that pervade his work, especially the continuing power of ancestral memory and the timeless presence of the past. The newer poems, elusive and allusive like much of his poetry, also delve into those issues, often through unexpectedly apt and occasionally jarring images of Bear in situations where we have not already encountered him. Even the previously published poems and the excerpts from the novels take on new valence through being contextualized with other work, including the visual art, which specifically articulates Bear. The examples of verbal art draw from and fulfill one another in ways that reading them separately does not, and the visual art operates as more than simple illustration; rather, it forms part of an integrated realization of the image of Bear. One can appreciate this book, itself an object of beauty, in its own right and, because of the importance of Bear in his work, use it to enhance an appreciation of Momaday's writing and painting in general.

This reprint edition, unchanged since its earlier publication, should bring Bear to new readers and contribute to keeping Momaday's work before those who have already sampled it. The University of New Mexico Press has thus performed a valuable service.