I always find it interesting that authors who write such
opaque prose are lauded as great writers.
Isn’t the point of great writing to make it easier for the reader to
live in the world the author creates?
Momaday seems to be another one of those writers in that
vein, being praised for evocative stories that are frankly not very interesting
or fun to read. His writing style is not
stylish but turgid and maudlin.
Here Momaday tells the story of Abel, a young Native American
going from a life on an Indian Reservation off to war, and then back to the
alien world of America. He struggles
with the past, both the near past and the distant pass of his lost ancestral
home, which appears to be the point of the story. We see Abel disintegrate as he struggles with
his past and the lost past of his ancestors.
The novel is certainly sad and evocative of a lost world. But those who bemoan an age that no longer
exists are doomed to live in an unreality, as is the case for Abel.
This novel mostly was boring with a few flashes of
insight. And some ways I almost found it
to be propaganda with a point lost in a convoluted prose, jumping from one time
frame to another with little warning to the reader. Great writing?
Well to some I obviously so since it won a Pulitzer Prize, but I wouldn’t
recommend it.
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