On Thomas Merton

by Mary Gordon

Overview

From the best-selling novelist and memoirist: a deeply personal view of her discovery of the celebrated modern monk and thinker through his writings.

“If Thomas Merton had been a writer and not a monk, we would never have heard of him. If Thomas Merton had been a monk and not a writer, we would never have heard of him.”

So begins acclaimed author Mary Gordon in this probing, candid exploration of the man who became the face and voice of mid-twentieth-century American Catholicism. Approaching Merton “writer to writer,” Gordon illuminates his life and work through his letters, journals, autobiography, and fiction. Pope Francis has celebrated Merton as “a man of dialogue,” and here Gordon shows that the dialogue was as much internal as external—an unending conversation, and at times a heated conflict, between Merton the monk and Merton the writer.

Rich with excerpts from Merton’s own writing, On Thomas Merton produces an intimate portrait of a man who “lived life in all its imperfectability, reaching toward it in exaltation, pulling back in anguish, but insisting on the primacy of his praise as a man of God.”

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781611807677
Publisher:	Shambhala
Publication date:	01/07/2020
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	4.90(w) x 7.60(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Mary Gordon is the author of eight novels, including There Your Heart Lies, The Company of Women, and The Love of My Youth; six works of nonfiction, including Joan of Arc: A Life and the memoirs The Shadow Man and Circling My Mother; and three collections of short fiction, including The Stories of Mary Gordon, which was awarded the Story Prize. She has received many other honors, including a Lila Wallace–Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and an Academy Award for Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She teaches at Barnard College and lives in New York City.

Hometown:

New York, New York

Date of Birth:

December 8, 1949

Place of Birth:

New York, New York

Education:

A.B., Barnard College, 1971; M.A., Syracuse University, 1973

Table of Contents

1 Writer to Writer: But What Kind? 1

2 The Seven Storey Mountain 41

3 My Argument with the Gestapo 63

4 Tire Journals 87

Notes 135

Works Cited 143

Credits 145

Editorial Reviews

Ardent, heartfelt, headlong: with these words Mary Gordon lovingly penetrates to the core of Thomas Merton’s ongoing importance, but the same words apply to her achievement. Gordon is the ideal reader of Merton, matching his intelligence, irony, and authentic feel for the world beyond words. Her book brings his books back to life, and belongs with them from now on.”—James Carroll, author of Constantine’s Sword and The Cloister

“Only a writer as talented as Mary Gordon could have written about a writer as talented as Thomas Merton. I've read dozens of books about my hero, the Trappist monk Thomas Merton, and suspected that I couldn't learn much that was new. Mary Gordon's fascinating new book proved me wrong.  She opens up an essential side of Merton's life—his life as a writer—in a way that helps me understand him an entirely new, and entirely surprising, light."—James Martin, SJ, author of Jesus: A Pilgrimage and Becoming Who You Are

“Brilliant, incisive.... intelligent, moving.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Merton devotees and those wishing to learn more about him will appreciate this detailed look at his accomplishments and struggles.”—Library Journal 

“.... An ideal introduction to Merton for literary readers.”—Booklist

“[Mary Gordon] brings to this book on Merton what he himself often offered others: the frank convictions of a practiced teacher, the certainty of an established critic, and the sympathy of a successful writer who is equally aware of struggle.”—America 

“If Merton is to remain a living voice, it is from such honest and steadfast devotion as Mary Gordon’s On Thomas Merton.”—New York Journal of Books 

From the Publisher

★ 10/08/2018
This brilliant, incisive work from biographer, novelist, and memoirist Gordon (Reading Jesus) examines the relationship—and tension—between 20th-century Christian philosopher Thomas Merton’s dual roles as writer and monk. Gordon approaches her subject through four facets of Merton’s writing life: his relationship with the church that censored him; his bestselling memoir, The Seven-Story Mountain; his novel My Argument with the Gestapo; and his private journals (which Gordon quotes from extensively). The author depicts a man often in conflict with himself and his church, a man who felt compelled to write and yet who hated being pressured to write: “I am sickened by being treated as an article for sale, as a commodity... God have mercy on me,” and later, “Today I feel hateful, and miserable, exhausted, and I would gladly die... Abbot Dom James is in absolute control of a bird that everyone wants to hear sing.” The section on his journals, where Merton expressed himself freely, is the strongest part of the book—particularly Gordon’s reaction to entries written shortly before Merton’s death in 1968. “Because this flawed mess of a man lived every day with fullness, with a heartfelt passion,” Gordon writes, “I close the journal, and I weep.” Readers will be just as affected by this intelligent, moving book. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly