Seven Mountains of Thomas Merton - Softcover

Mott, Michael

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0395404517 ISBN 13: 9780395404515

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1986

Synopsis

The only authorized biography of Merton-a New York Times bestseller and a nominee for the Pulitzer Prize-this book was based on interviews as well as Mertonā€™s unpublished writings. New Afterword by the Author. Index; photographs.

About this title

Review

While many biographies and studies of the writer and monk Thomas Merton have been published over the years, The Seven Mountains of Thomas Merton remains the official biography sanctioned by the Thomas Merton Legacy Trust. Mott was given access to all of the private journals that, according to Merton's legacy, were not to be made public for 25 years after his death. (These have now been released; see for example The Intimate Merton, which contains a selection of these journal entries.) Mott's goal in this work was to approach the writer in a balanced manner--to correct the record where Merton himself may have had the facts wrong (early childhood material, for example), and to offer a different interpretation at times from the one Merton himself comes to in his own autobiographical writings. Above all Mott is not writing hagiography: this is no life of a saint, at least not in the stereotyped sense. But it is clearly the life of a real 20th-century man who, along with the expected dead ends and blind alleys, did find himself listening to a real call and following it as deeply and as passionately as his life would allow. And who knows? Perhaps that's a good definition of saint. --Doug Thorpe

About the Author

Michael Mott is a contributor for the following Houghton Mifflin Company Title: The Seven Mountains of Thomas Merton

About this edition

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Company
• Publication date: 1986
• ISBN 10: 0395404517
• ISBN 13: 9780395404515
• Binding: Paperback