In The Names: A Memoir, N. Scott Momaday has written an important and beautiful book. Like The Way to Rainy Mountain, it is autobiography, but whereas the earlier book is a spiritual journey only to his Indian past, The Names is more comprehensive covering both his Indian and White ancestry. The Names is also more objective, especially in the early part of the book. (p. 178)

Momaday gives us facts about his ancestry on his mother's side, which is mostly non-Indian, and his father's, which is Kiowa and the principal catalyst of his imagination. To him these facts are interesting and necessary to recall but only when shaped by the imagination. Both reality and art are acts of the imagination…. The Names is a work of art in which Momaday constructs his past to bring discipline and order to those memories which have made him the man and artist he is. Momaday writes this autobiographical work as an obligation and a preliminary in the same way that Milton's "Lycidas" was an obligation and a preliminary.

The book is closely related to all other major works by Momaday. In all of them he transmutes memories into art. Like Faulkner, he uses segments from one work in another. (pp. 178-79)

Momaday shows his mastery of prose styles and narrative techniques in the book. At the beginning he writes primarily a plain prose to recount the facts about his ancestry; later he uses reverie to narrate childhood memories at Jemez and elsewhere; and at the end of the book he writes beautifully descriptive passages reminiscent of those in House Made of Dawn. (p. 179)

Momaday's book is infused with deep feeling, with love for family and friends and places. It is a sensitive and loving tribute to his parents and other ancestors. The reader is caught in the fusion of mind and emotion, which is the achievement of a good book. (pp. 179-80)