Critical Essay | Critical Review by Mick McAllister

SOURCE: A review of The Names, in The Southern Review, Louisiana State University, Vol. XIV, No. 2, Spring, 1978, pp. 387-89.

In the piece reprinted below, McAllister provides a mixed review of The Names, questioning, in particular, Momaday's advocacy of self-imagining as a means of establishing Native identity.

Scott Momaday remains one of the premier writers of American Indian literature, his reputation established by two of his first achievements, the novel House Made of Dawn and his cultural memoir, The Way to Rainy Mountain. Since the latter appeared in 1969, he has continued to produce essays and poems and to demonstrate that he is one of our most polished writers; but his admirers have waited eagerly for his next full-length work. The Names is that work. Perhaps my eagerness inflated my expectations too much; in spite of its many good qualities, it is a disappointment.

One excellence of Momaday's writing...
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