House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday

Dypaloh. There was a house made of dawn. It was made of pollen and of rain, and the land was very old and everlasting. There were many colors on the hills, and the plain was bright with different-colored clays and sands. Red and blue and spotted horses grazed the plain, and there was a dark wilderness on the mountains beyond. The land was still and strong. It was beautiful all around.

Abel was running. He was alone and running, hard at first, heavily, but then easily and well. The road curved out in front of him and rose away in the distance. He could not see the town. The valley was gray with rain, and snow lay out upon the dunes. It was dawn. The first light had been deep and vague in the mist, and then the sun flashed and a great yellow glare fell under the cloud. The road verged upon clusters of juniper and mesquite, and he could see the black angles and twists of wood beneath the hard white crust; there was a shine and glitter on the ice. He was running, running. He could see the horses in the fields and the crooked line of the river below.

For a time the sun was whole beneath the cloud; then it rose into eclipse, and a dark and certain shadow came upon the land. And Abel was running. He was naked to the waist, and his arms and shoulders had been marked with burnt wood and ashes. The cold rain slanted down upon him and left his skin mottled and streaked. The road curved out and lay into the bank of rain beyond, and Abel was running. Against the winter sky and the long, light landscape of the valley at dawn, he seemed to be standing still, very little and alone.

This is how Momaday’s novel begins. I had to look up Dypaloh. It is from the storytelling tradition of the Jemez, a Native American tribe in the Southwest that built many of the pueblos tourists can now visit. “Dypaloh” is how their storytellers begin their stories, much like storytellers of a different tradition might say “Once upon a time.”

Abel, like Momaday, is a Native American, and House Made of Dawn is a story that focuses on Abel’s alienation, both from the world of his ancestral traditions, and from the ever-encroaching world of modern life. He belongs in neither place, and the metaphoric running with which Momaday opens the novel, is revealed in its closing paragraphs to have ritualistic significance as well.

Abel did not return to his grandfather’s house. He walked hurriedly southward along the edge of town. At the last house he paused and took off his shirt. His body was numb and ached with cold, and he knelt at the mouth of the oven. He reached inside and placed his hands in the frozen crust and rubbed his arms and chest with ashes. And he got up and went on hurriedly to the road and south on the wagon road in the darkness. There was no sound but his own quick, even steps on the hard crust of the snow, and he went on and on, far out on the road.

The pale light grew upon the land, and it was only a trick of the darkness at first, the slow stirring and standing away of the night; and then the murky, leaden swell of light upon the snow and the dunes and the black evergreen spines. And the east deepened into light above the black highland, soft and milky and streaked with gray. He was almost there, and he saw the runners standing away in the distance.

He came along to them, and they huddled in the cold together, waiting, and the pale light before the dawn rose up in the valley. A single cloud lay over the world, heavy and still. It lay out upon the black mesa. Smudging out the margin and spilling over the lee. But at the saddle there was nothing. There was only the clear pool of eternity. They held their eyes upon it, waiting, and, too slow and various to see, the void began to deepen and to change: pumice, and pearl, and mother-of-pearl, and the pale and brilliant blush of orange and of rose. And then the deep hanging rim ran with fire and the sudden cold flare of dawn struck upon the arc, and the runners sprang away.

The soft and sudden sound of their going, swift and breaking away all at once, startled him, and he began to run after them. He was running, and his body cracked open with pain, and he was running on. He was running and there was no reason to run but the running itself and the land and the dawn appearing. The sun rose up in the saddle and shone in shafts upon the road across the snow-covered valley and the hills, and the chill of the night fell away and it began to rain. He saw the slim black bodies of the runners in the distance, gliding away without sound through the slanting light and the rain. He was running and a cold sweat broke out upon him and his breath heaved with the pain of running. His legs buckled and he fell in the snow. The rain fell around him in the snow and he saw his broken hands, how the rain made streaks upon them and dripped soot upon the snow. And he got up and ran on. He was alone and running on. All of his being was concentrated in the sheer motion of running on, and he was past caring about the pain. Pure exhaustion laid hold of his mind, and he could see at least without having to think. He could see the canyon and the mountains and the sky. He could see the rain and the river and the field beyond. He could see the dark hills at dawn. He was running, and under his breath he began to sing. There was no sound, and he had no voice; he had only the words of a song. And he went running on the rise of the song. House made of pollen, house made of dawn. Qtsedaba.

The novel begins and ends in the same place. And “Qtsedaba” is another word from Jemez storytelling tradition, signalling the end of a tale. By enclosing his novel in this form, Momaday, like his character Abel, seems to be trying to bridge two worlds -- in Momaday’s case, the tradition of oral storytelling handed down by his ancestors with the English-language tradition of the written novel.

Some of this I had to look up on the Internet, seeing as though I knew nothing about Momaday and House Made of Dawn before picking it up. No wait, I take that back. I knew one thing about it: it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1969, the only reason it had found its way onto my reading list.

My own reaction to it was more cryptic. Before looking into its backstory, I would have characterized it as an evocative novel, less about people and plot and more about emotion and loss. Even the title seemed obscure to me. A “house made of dawn” is mentioned several times in the novel, but I could never quite wrap my mind around what it was or what it might represent. The light framed by a mesa? A peyote dream? A song of one’s ancestors? That which had been lost? It seems to be all of these things at once, and something that seemed meant more to be felt than understood.

But perhaps I was wrong about that. There is a surprisingly lucid description of its plot on its Wikipedia entry, giving one the impression that it is clearer and better paced than I remember it being. Yes, sure, all those things you describe happened in the novel, but they did not seem to make the same kind of impression on my recollection than they perhaps would have in a more traditional novel.

And, evidently, I am not alone. The same Wikipedia entry lists several critical appraisals of the novel, in which the critics, while acknowledging Momaday’s talent, recognize the singular challenge he has set for himself: “attempting to transliterate Indian culture, myth, and sensibility into an alien art form, without loss.”

Yeah, I guess that could be it. I didn’t have the context to understand what Momaday was attempting, nor, it may seem, the awareness needed to pull the myths Momaday is expounding through the very filter through which he has chosen to transmit them. In other words, House Made of Dawn is an oral Native American story told through an written Anglo American form. No wonder something got lost in translation.

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This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.