House Made of Dawn (1968) by N. Scott Momaday

 Book Review

House Made of Dawn (1968)

by N. Scott Momaday

   I checked House Made of Darn out of the library (Audiobook) after I read his New York Times obituary, published back at the end of January of this year.  Momaday was the first Native American author to win a Pulitzer Prize, in 1969, for this book.  Again, I found myself bemused that despite a twenty year more-or-less active interest in literature penned by Native American authors, I'd never heard of the first Native American author to win a Pulitzer Prize.   Momaday published his whole life, in a variety of disciplines: prose, poetry, memoirs and essays but House Made of Dawn is the only book that has endured as a hit.

    House Made of Dawn is chock full of modernist technique- like many serious writers of his era, Faulkner is a major touchstone- Momaday throws different narrators, time periods and events together in a thoughtfully constructed jumble and leaves the reader to piece it all together.  Also like many prize winning books from this era, there's a heavy element of the existentialist/European novel of ideas.  There are also a hatful of cringe inducing female characters.  Abel, Momaday's protagonist, leaves the reservation, joins the army, washes up in Los Angeles, drinks, fights, kills a white man, goes to prison, gets out and heads back to the Southwest.  In between these events we get reminiscences by Abel about his past, and the past of this forefathers/mothers (one of the most memorable passages involves Abel relating his Grandmother's memories).

   I get the sense, after listening to the novel and reading the New York Times obituary, that Momaday really said what he had to say in his first novel and spent the rest of his career refining his message.