[House Made of Dawn] is a brave book. Momaday's ambition is enormous and untried; he is attempting to transliterate Indian culture, myth, and sensibility into an alien art form, without loss. He may in fact be seeking to make the modern Anglo novel a vehicle for a sacred text.

In the effort massive obstacles are met by author and reader, and one should perhaps catalog Momaday's literary offenses. Style must be attended to, as it demands attention…. Repetition, polysyndeton, and there as subject continue to deaden the narrative's force well into the book. Happily, the style crisps a good deal after the first twenty-eight pages, when the story finally begins…. (pp. 173-74)

The language in the first part vacillates between lugubrious flatness … and fascinating thought, as in "the eagle ranges far and wide over the land, farther than any other creature, and all things there are related simply...