The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 31 July 2012
by N. Scott Momaday
With a name like Abel, you'd think the main character of this potent little novel would be fated to significant events. And you'd be right. In this groundbreaking and impressionistic book, Native American author N. Scott Momaday gives us the story of young Abel, an alienated Pueblo Indian tribesman living in the middle of the 20th century. We meet him just home from serving in the military at the end of World War 2. His experiences there have added an edge to his character, serving in the white man's army and returning to the tribal homeland in the dusty but strikingly beautiful southwestern desert. Momaday has said that he is more of a poet than novelist, and his decriptions of the land and environment have a strong poetic quality. His descriptions of the people, too, are steeped in poetry and a compelling sense of history. Abel is seen from a distance, though, his character as told through the eyes of others around him: the woman who lives alone on the edge of town, his grandfather who instills a respect for their history, the down-and-out denizens of Los Angeles where he tries to make his way in the world, and the lonesome priest who finds his place in a culture that integrates Catholicism with the traditional spiritual history of the Native Americans. Abel, therefore, is an outline of a man. We see his actions, but never see the thinking behind them. What we do get, though, is a moving portrait of the struggle between native ways and the need to make one's way in a world dominated by another mainstream culture. It is evident here, beneath the lavish language of the book, that Momaday cares about how these two cultures interact and coexist. There is a sense of native history, and for those raised in that culture, their perceptions of the wider world are colored by their sympathies for each other and by an understanding of the clashes and compromises of coexistence. That balance, and lack of balance, are beautifully told in this somewhat abstract, challenging and poetic novel.
(For this book, Momaday was awarded the 1969 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.)