thelibrarianontherun:

Happy Birthday, Thomas Merton.

His friend and fellow Catholic badass Robert Giroux remembers,

The ”Mountain” appeared at a time of great disillusion: we had won World War II but the cold war had started, and the public was looking for reassurance. Second, Merton’s story was unusual. A well-educated and articulate young man withdraws — why? — into a monastery. And the tale was well told, with liveliness and eloquence.

I read it shortly after abandoning On the Road, worn out by its bleakness, and here, lo and behold, an author of the same generation, who started down the same path as the Beat poets, then made an abrupt about-face. Lovely.