Because I find it difficult to categorize Scott Momaday as a writer, I also find it hard to fit this book into a slot. It is a collection of essays, but it’s more than that. Some of the essays are biographical, but it isn’t a collection of biographical essays. Some of the essays are philosophical, but it isn’t just a collection of philosophical essays. Many of the essays, of course, are about Native Americans and the Native American experience, but calling them that isn’t helpful either. Some of the essays are new, but at least one was written when Momaday was a student at Stanford in the ‘60s. Some are lyrical; some are weighty. Some are narrative, some are descriptive. The categories just don’t work.

Of course, I have the same difficulty categorizing the man himself. Painter, poet, novelist, essayist, Pulitzer Prize winner, Gourd Dance Society member, Regents Professor of English: in the class I’m currently taking from him, he speaks of the cave paintings at Lascaux, opening night at the Rockefeller Center, Kiowa origin myths, and train rides across Siberia with the same authority and intensity, sometimes seriously, sometimes humorously. He sits at the head of the seminar table, long gray hair pulled back in a short pony-tail, and tells stories of the Kiowa in a precise English I think of as Oxonian. Out of nowhere, he says "Haw! That’s what the old Kiowa say. Haw!" He defies categories.

Man Made of Words is like that. It’s like him. Many of the essays tell stories that are familiar to those who have read his other works -- "The Arrowmaker," for instance, and the numerous references to the Leonid meteor storm on Nov. 13, 1833. But that doesn’t matter. This collection is a beautiful set of musings on the nature and power of language as instrument of the Native American oral tradition.

Momaday is a traveller and where he travels he studies the history and the oral traditions ("traipsing after legends," he calls it on p. 154). Thus, this book offers some interesting pieces of the Billy the Kid stories that I, at least, had not heard before ("New Mexico: Passage into Legend," pp. 154-162). There is also a lovely story, again involving Billy the Kid, about a nun in Trinidad, Colorado ("The Physicians of Trinidad," pp. 202-204). The last section of the book, entitled "The Storyteller and His Art," contains many such vignettes, though perhaps not all are useful to the folklorist. "The Indian Dog," for example, might easily have been included in his biographical The Way to Rainy Mountain. Nonetheless, they’re delightful to read.

The only weakness of the work, in my judgement, is that the essays aren’t dated. Thus, it isn’t clear whether we’re seeing the development of Momaday’s thinking, or what he thinks now. That, of course, is not his purpose, and there are many internal guides for those of us who like to know. He tells us, for instance, that "The Morality of Indian Hating" (pp. 57-76) was written in 1962 or 63, and we know that "Jay Silverheels" was written shortly after he died in 1980. Still, I’d like to know the dates of the essays.

Overall, though, I think this an excellent addition to Momaday’s canon. Not only does it have some useful things to say for those who are interested in Native American studies, American Literature, and Oral Tradition in general, but it will also appeal to those who read strictly for entertainment. It’s a wonderful book. I recommend it.

Jim Vandergriff
University of Arizona
Tucson, Arizona