In the Bear's House

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant
Review: Brilliant, moving, insightful, memorable. Momaday is a treasure, and this is his best yet.

Rating:
Summary: Thought provoking work of beauty
Review: This book presents Momaday's work--new and old--concerned with Bear and the idea of wilderness. It offers poetry, drama, and painting all centered on Bear as a representation of the wilderness. Momaday's idea of the wilderness reflects neither the central strand in American life that comes down from the Puritans, nor the preservationist ideology of urban-bound environmentalists, but his writing critically reflects upon both these traditions. Momaday finds Bear, and hence the wilderness, in a conversation between God and the original bear while eating huckleberries, on a train in Moscow, in the drawing for a bronze statue, and many other such places. Throughout this book, the author's life-long concern for the life of the imagination as our best existence (as he has often said) shows forth. This book is an excellent introduction to the work of a great American writer, as well as a beautiful addition to any collection already well-stocked with Momaday's work.

I taught this book as the first in a sequence of five books in a course on Native American poetry. The students loved it. Some of our discussions of the paintings were among the best my classes have had.