Fifth, final, and least satisfying volume of Merton's prodigious correspondence (The Courage for Truth, 1993, etc.). Previous books in this series have presented Merton's letters on writing, spirituality, friendship, and love. This time the prime focus is war, a subject about which Merton, a cloistered Cistercian monk, has little original to say. Mostly composed in the years just before and after the Cuban missile crisis, and usually directed toward peace activists like James Forrest or Gordon Zahn, these letters offer predictable mutterings about the dangers of nuclear holocaust, tendentious attacks on American right-wingers, and cracker-barrel advice on the idiocy of fallout shelters (``Lots of shelters that have been built have caved in or filled with water, etc.''). Occasional forays into religious themes reveal him to be a poor prognosticator as well, as when he misreads Vatican II as a ``tightening of the screws.'' More intriguing are letters concerning a meeting in 1956 between Merton and psychoanalyst Gregory Zilboorg, who, in the words of editor Shannon, labeled Merton ``neurotic in his need to get his own way and pathological in his demand for solitude.'' This harsh evaluation, which Merton seems to accept (``Zilboorg has been terrific''), is bolstered by letters surrounding Merton's vocational crisis of 1959, in which he applies for permission to leave his monastery for a hermitage. When the request is denied by his superiors, Merton at first accepts the decision but soon begins to agitate; tensions run high until he is allowed to enter a hermitage in the 1960s. In this episode and others, Merton comes off as Peck's Bad Boy, endlessly provoking Vatican officials and siding with mischief-makers. Some compensation for all this ego-preening comes near the end, in correspondence with unidentified monks and nuns to whom Merton offers simple, solid spiritual advice (``be patient, pay attention to obedience and to grace, trust God...''). Merton as bore. Try The Seven Storey Mountain instead.
Pub Date: Sept. 27, 1994
ISBN: 0-374-29191-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
