Customer Reviews

The Seven Mountains of Thomas Merton

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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.

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.

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.

This book is EXCELLENT; a must read for all serious students of Thomas Merton's life. Michael Mott has walked a delicate line by writing a Merton biography,accessing Roman Catholic sources, without offending church leaders.

Unbelievable that one of the most significant religious figures of the 20th century should be relegated to an atrociously huge number of pages (passing as a book) that reflect such an insignificantly small amount of his vast and encompassing spirituality. Mott should consider a profession other than writing and the publisher should be ashamed of itself. Read Merton himself.

It's a shame that John Howard Griffith was unable to finish his authorized biography of Merton due to illness. Unlike Mott (who replaced him, he understood monastic spirituality.

Mott seems more interested in cramming Merton's life into his "Seven Mountain" construct, resulting in confusing chronology.

The portion of the biography that Griffith was able to complete was published by his estate--it is clear that his would have been the better book.