The Seven Mountains of Thomas Merton [Paperback]

Michael Mott (Author)

Book Description

Series: Harvest Book | Publication Date: November 18, 1993

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New York Times bestseller and a nominee for the Pulitzer Prize-this book was based on interviews as well as Merton’s unpublished writings. New Afterword by the Author. Index; photographs.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com 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

Product Details

• Paperback: 720 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books (November 18, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0156806819
• ISBN-13: 978-0156806817
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 1.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #260,192 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Definitive Biography of Thomas Merton, May 13, 2000

By 

Todd Scull - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Seven Mountains of Thomas Merton (Paperback)

Mott has carefully researched thousands of documents to come up with a biography of Merton that is both scholarly and engaging. For years, Monica Furlong's biography of Merton was my favorite, but Mott has surpassed her work largely because of his access to materials that were not available before. Perhaps the most popular example of this was Merton's romantic relationship with the student nurse from Louisville. Mott's honest and objective view of this crucial event in Merton's life is masterfully studied and composed in the tone of a good friend who won't accept facile answers as truth. In this sense, Mott does more than write about Merton, but frequently engages the Merton he has found with the curiosity any fan of Merton's would understand, and a depth few of Merton's biographers have achieved.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Quirky But Best Study of Merton, October 3, 2005

By 

Billyjack D'Urberville (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Seven Mountains of Thomas Merton (Paperback)

Merton was and remains a difficult subject. Decades after this book's release, more could be written about Merton, but in the end it would still be a puzzler. Sympathetic without being awed, sound in essence with some quirky judgments, it is unlikely this book will ever be topped for either the ordinary or the reasonably informed reader. The search for Merton is the ultimate hunt for the great snipe or the unicorn.

Merton was an almost archtypical 20th century personality in many ways in his appeal, his sadness, his human depth and mystery. Like the deceased in an Agatha Christie novel, everybody thinks they know him and nobody does. This includes many who never met him nor could have. Son of a wandering Welsh artist, Merton almost 40 years after his death retains a very primeval attraction, like the stoneage painters in the ancient French caves. Mott's informative and magisterial style may be way too cool for many devotees of the artist-monk. But the unlikely Mott had an important talent for this venture: his own sort of primeval eyesight or sense of smell, warning him as a writer that the primary danger for a Merton biographer was getting sucked into the vortex of imaginary friend. The writing sometimes crackles, between the lines, reflecting a heroic effort to maintain balanced objectivity at all costs. It reminds you that this sort of scholarly distance, when applied to a life, is a very modern sort of virtue. Here it is severely tested by a quite potent ghost many are still sighting.

On many ultimate problems of Merton's life, Mott is pretty sound. His research, incidentally, was ground-breaking at the time of original publication. There were way too many ducks at this carnival, and they were moving way too fast for Mott to hit them all. Many (the nurse/girlfriend and Merton's response, what happened in Asia, Merton's ultimate commitment to remaining at Gethsemani) are still moving.

The book, incidentally, is very well written with solid footnotes. Mott himself knows the issues that remain, as his recent intro to the new edition states. But he wisely let his original work stand.

Simply, for anyone wishing to delve into Merton, or any of his dimensions or aspects, this book is indispensible and we are quite lucky to have it.

Also, a footnote to Mertonphobes the world over: John Howard Griffin would have never finished that biography. As Brett Ashly best put it, it was pretty to think so. But anyone who knows the massive problems in Merton studies, or the sort of writer Griffin was, will know this. He would have written a very good book in his own manner, which we sorely miss, but nothing like this. Give the poor thankless Michael Matt his due, folks.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars American Mystic, February 7, 2005

By 

wvano "wvano" (Philadelphia, PA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Seven Mountains of Thomas Merton (Paperback)

This, the authorized biography, is less revelatory since the publication in the past decade of Merton's voluminous letters and journals, but it is still an indispensable source of telling details, provocative commentary, and precise chronology about the life of the famous writer and monk.

Like many biographers, Mott adopts something of the style of his subject. His episodic, often elliptical narrative mimics Merton's prose and compellingly evokes the feel of Merton's life. Despite its style and size, however, The Seven Mountains of Thomas Merton is not entirely successful, in my view, in providing a definitive portrait of its subject.

Mott seems more at ease appreciating Merton's considerable literary talent and analyzing his often enigmatic psyche than in assessing his theological and spiritual significance. To fully appreciate Merton's place in American religious history, one may want to supplement this generally fine biography with more recent and theologically oriented appraisals.