In the Bear's House

by N. Scott Momaday

Overview

Since receiving the Pulitzer Prize in 1969 for his first novel, House Made of Dawn, N. Scott Momaday has had one of the most remarkable careers in twentieth-century American letters. Here, in In the Bear's House, Momaday passionately explores themes of loneliness, sacredness and aggression through his depiction of Bear, the one animal that has both inspired and haunted him throughout his lifetime.

Winner of the Oaklahoma Book Award for Poetry, In the Bear's House celebrates Momaday's extraordinary creative vision and evolution as one of our most gifted artists with transcendent dignity and gentleness.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780826348395
Publisher:	University of New Mexico Press
Publication date:	08/16/2010
Pages:	112
Product dimensions:	7.60(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

N. Scott Momaday won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1969 for his novel House Made of Dawn. Several of his books are available from UNM Press, including The Way to Rainy Mountain, Fiftieth Anniversary Edition.

Editorial Reviews

The Pulitzer-winning novelist (House Made of Dawn, 1969) offers this mixed media collage—forty paintings, a dialogue, twenty or so poems, and two poetic prose sections—all on the subject of the bear (or "Bear"), an animal of cosmic and spiritual significance among Momaday's Kiowa Indians. Momaday's blend of biblical and Native American spirituality and language seems almost old-fashioned in light of the more separatist studies that have dominated since he first arrived on the scene back in the ‘60s. In fact, his traditional verse forms and expressive clarity will remind us of his tutelage under Yvor Winters, and Janet Lewis (to whom this volume is dedicated). The longish, eight-part dialogue between Yahweh (or "Great Mystery") and Urset (the primal Bear) covers issues of essence and nature, dreaming and storytelling, time and evolution. Momaday reshapes Christian and Kiowa myth into a witty and plain-spoken cosmic exchange, and provides a perfect gloss to the seemingly simple poems that follow. Momaday's clean and sharp measures enhance a number of well-made poems that date mostly from recent times, but include a stunning portrait of a bear first written in 1963. "The Blind Astrologers" captures the dual essence of Bear as mythic and mundane; "To An Aged Bear" encourages a bear to prepare for his spirit journey after death; "The Print of the Paw" understands the bear's mark as a "wondrous thing," the imprint suggesting a grand whole; and a few rhymed couplets and quatrains perfectly describe the bears' grandeur in life and art. The bold brushstrokes of Momaday's paintings echo the power and precision of his poetry and prose.

Kirkus Reviews

"Tsoai-talee ("Rock-Tree Boy") opens the book with a series of Camus-like dialogues between a bear and Yahweh, exploring matters of nature, longing, language, and hunger. . . . A selection of Momaday's poetry over the decades plunges readers into a mystical realm where boys become bears, and a bear is a man, and the man is Momaday."—Kate Nelson, New Mexico Magazine

From the Publisher