The Internet Book Database of Fiction

#	Date	Publisher	Binding	Cover
1	1976-00-00	HarperCollins

Blurb:: N. Scott Momaday"s beautifully written memoir of childhood in Jemez Pueblo, New Mexico, is geographically as well as chronologically defined, incorporating "the empty spaces of time in the morning and afternoon," the wide blue New Mexico sky, and the undeveloped high desert into the narrative as Momaday searches the landscape of his memory for the key word or image -- the name -- for things that will retrieve the entirety of his history. Retrieval of this complex history, of emotion and memory, "the vibrant ecstasy of so much being," is almost impossible: "Again and again, I have come to that awful edge, that one word, perhaps, that I cannot bring from my mouth." The Names is moving in its description of the ceremonies of Jemez Pueblo and the stories of Momaday"s family. The author writes sometimes in a child"s voice and sometimes in his grandfather"s or the voices of others around him. It is clearly a child"s story, saturated with a child"s sense of wonder. But Momaday also provides an account of the process of attempted recovery, the descent into storytelling: "The first word gives origin to the second, the first and second to the third, . . . and so on. You cannot begin with the second word and tell the story, for the telling of the story is a cumulative process, a chain of becoming, at last of being."