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The Thomas Merton Encyclopedia
By William H. Shannon, Christine M. Bochen, and Patrick F. O’Connell
Orbis Books, 2002, 556 pages, 50 illustrations
It has been many years since, at the age of twenty, I bought a copy of Edward Rice’s The Man in the Sycamore Tree: The Good Times and Hard Life of Thomas Merton: An Entertainment, from the honor-system book rack at a Catholic retreat house near Philadelphia. Merton had been dead for about eight years by then. I had never heard of him, but the images and text in Rice’s book invited me in and I began an exploration, from new perspective, of the Catholic faith in which I had been raised and in which I had lost confidence. It is an exploration that continues, and in which Merton still provides help and guidance.
I would not have imagined, back then, that Merton’s life and writings would eventually become the product of what is the equivalent of a small but significant publishing industry within the larger world of books and letters. Merton knew, either personally or via correspondence, many people of importance in the mid-twentieth century. He wrote about war and social justice, prayer and contemplation, poetry, fiction, and the visual arts, while at the same time being engaged in most of these areas directly as an activist, monastic novice master, poet, novelist, and visual artist himself. A Merton enthusiast can sometimes feel hard-pressed to keep up with his life’s work and to stay on an even keel while exploring it.
Given this state of affairs, The Thomas Merton Encyclopedia is a welcome addition to the world of Mertonalia. The book has been ably assembled by well-known Merton scholars William H. Shannon, Christine M. Bochen, and Patrick F. O’Connell, each of whom authored his or her fair share of the 350 articles the book contains. They have lived up to their intent, “to inform, not to critique,” in entries that focus on four categories of Merton’s life and literary output: his books; essential themes from his work; important individuals in his life; and the places in which he lived.
Thus conceived and executed, this single-volume work gives the Merton reader, for example, an approximately 3500-word introduction to Merton’s difficult, late, fascinating book-length poem The Geography of Lograire. It sums up his perspective, citing works from throughout his life, on themes such as racism, redemption, love, and hesychasm. It offers brief biographies of Merton’s parents and brother and friends, including Robert Lax, Ad Reinhardt, Mark Van Doren, and Catherine de Hueck Doherty, and takes us to Merton’s Cambridge and Columbia University. The presentation is clear and concise throughout, and the black and white illustrations -- people, places, book covers, drawings by Merton -- make this a very attractive resource.
The reader of The Thomas Merton Encyclopedia would receive greater benefit from the book if it had included a table of contents and a comprehensive index. As it stands it is a wonderfully browsable work, but individuals seeking specific subjects and references will face, sometimes, an uphill battle. One hopes that if periodic revision is planned for the book, the authors and publisher will take this possibility into consideration.
One of the tests of a book like this is whether it inspires me to go back to the source. I can only say that an hour after I first opened The Thomas Merton Encyclopedia I was searching used bookstores on the internet to find an affordable copy of Merton’s Day of a Stranger. The Encyclopedia and I were both successful.
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