Earth Keeper: Reflections on the American Land

Scott Momaday questions the function of living in his spiritual footnote, the brief and self-exploring Earth Keeper. Earth Keeper tells us what we already know in fewer words than it takes us to think it. If you were to tell the author to stop writing, surely he would continue what he was doing before, since it was never writing in the traditional sense, to begin with. It’s not particularly difficult to create beautiful prose. What Scott Momaday has inherited from what he would call the Earth is a gift, and as self-referential writers go, he is able to turn that word and his own words inside out.

Without the retribution of evil, the senses dim and life takes on a sepia hue. Little devils are peppered into the pot as a seasoning, and they incorporate themselves willingly and they dance among the PRESENTATION. What we are left with in closing is ART. There is no splitting as with a poem, nor stitching together as with a play. Our antagonist is not what we eat, but how we describe having eaten. En fin, I lack ugliness. Wish I were uglier. Wonder how Dragonfly would respond. We are all keepers of the Earth. I keep the Earth in my belly, and I always leave room for more.

When I enter into complicated moral situations, I would like to have a copy of Earth Keeper with me, to remind me that complexity comes from without, not from within.