Discusses Blake, Joyce, Pasternak, Faulkner, Styron, O'Connor, Camus, symbolism, creativity, alienation, contemplation, and freedom.

This volume provides a broad cross-section of Merton's work as an essayist, collecting pieces that are characteristic examples of his astonishing output and the

Poet, Trappist monk, religious philosopher, translator, social critic: the late Thomas Merton was all these things. This classic selection from his great body o

When Thomas Merton entered a Trappist monastery in December 1941, he turned his back on secular life—including a very promising literary career. He sent his j

Merton, one of the rare Western thinkers able to feel at home in the philosophies of the East, made the wisdom of Asia available to Westerners. "Zen enriches no