Scan barcode
A review by glendonrfrank
The Seven Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton
4.0
For no shortage of reasons, I find myself bewildered by a lot of the reviews here. Perhaps first and foremost, because the universal opinion seems to be that the first half is "slow" and it's in the second half where it "gets good." For the life of me, I can't fathom this, because both times that I have read this I found everything with his childhood and his time in university to be incredible, lifelike, and an engaging reflection of daily life slowly invaded by the divine. Every brief moment where art stirs his desire is filled with excitement as Merton takes the quiet steps to his transformation. But once he has his actual conversion I find the rest of the autobiography loses its sense of wonder and thrill. Of course, there is still a deal of "action" for the back third of the book, but without the "through a glass darkly" quality it feels more and more like a diatribe on various facets of the Catholic church. Which is all well and good, I just can't see how anyone could find it more interesting than the gorgeous tapestries he paints of himself in his youth, reaching out but never quite grasping.
My second umbrage - and maybe this is just me wishing Goodreads was more like Letterboxd - but I don't see a lot of engagement with the rich themes Merton weaves throughout this. Honestly, more than I'm interested in his spiritual transformation, I'm engaged with his incredible prose and the way he builds up a series of memorable vignettes into clear motifs that he begins tying off one by one in the book's conclusion. Most notable is that of his brother; the first scene that truly grabbed me in Seven Story Mountain is one of Merton's childhood, where he reflects on the way he emotionally wounded his younger brother John Paul, who took the sibling suffering in a sort of Christ-lie, open-handed fashion. In reflection, much of the book is about the relationship between the two Mertons, and the final chapter is largely focused on their full and proper reconciliation. This final chapter also features the resolution of Merton's life with his college friends, and the epilogue concludes his wrestling between his life as a writer and teacher - one often used to inflate himself - and his new life spiritual contemplative. As someone most fascinated by the way that art influenced Merton's journey, this resolution is probably the most interesting to me, especially given the way it paves the path for the great deal of other works that Merton would go on to write.
My final quibble - and this really is just a quibble - is the amount of one or two-star reviews who approached a spiritual autobiography and were upset at how spiritual it was? Like, yes, Merton is super Catholic and he was super Catholic in the 20th Century in the the USA, he is going to be speaking in fairly exclusionary terms. And it's perfectly okay to be uncomfortable with that, it's certainly an ongoing issue in Western Christianity broadly and I definitely think Merton falls short on a few points (note the final pages where he speaks glowingly of the monastery's unequivocal acceptance... for men) but to approach a book like this and essentially one-star it for its core premise is a strange move to me.
Anyways, I'm already beginning to write like Merton so I probably ought to close this overlong review but it strikes me reading this book that, more than just tracking one man's journey, a good autobiography is in some ways a reflection of its time. Even if you disagree with Merton's conclusions, I think Seven Storey Mountain is fascinating in the way it depicts 20th Century America, gripped in the fated sense that war was on the horizon yet unable to fully turn to grasp the peace it so desperately craves. The story of America and the story of Merton are one and the same, except that Merton's surrendering of self spares him from the horrors of war and brings him to the resolve of solitude that he has always somehow craved.
My second umbrage - and maybe this is just me wishing Goodreads was more like Letterboxd - but I don't see a lot of engagement with the rich themes Merton weaves throughout this. Honestly, more than I'm interested in his spiritual transformation, I'm engaged with his incredible prose and the way he builds up a series of memorable vignettes into clear motifs that he begins tying off one by one in the book's conclusion. Most notable is that of his brother; the first scene that truly grabbed me in Seven Story Mountain is one of Merton's childhood, where he reflects on the way he emotionally wounded his younger brother John Paul, who took the sibling suffering in a sort of Christ-lie, open-handed fashion. In reflection, much of the book is about the relationship between the two Mertons, and the final chapter is largely focused on their full and proper reconciliation. This final chapter also features the resolution of Merton's life with his college friends, and the epilogue concludes his wrestling between his life as a writer and teacher - one often used to inflate himself - and his new life spiritual contemplative. As someone most fascinated by the way that art influenced Merton's journey, this resolution is probably the most interesting to me, especially given the way it paves the path for the great deal of other works that Merton would go on to write.
My final quibble - and this really is just a quibble - is the amount of one or two-star reviews who approached a spiritual autobiography and were upset at how spiritual it was? Like, yes, Merton is super Catholic and he was super Catholic in the 20th Century in the the USA, he is going to be speaking in fairly exclusionary terms. And it's perfectly okay to be uncomfortable with that, it's certainly an ongoing issue in Western Christianity broadly and I definitely think Merton falls short on a few points (note the final pages where he speaks glowingly of the monastery's unequivocal acceptance... for men) but to approach a book like this and essentially one-star it for its core premise is a strange move to me.
Anyways, I'm already beginning to write like Merton so I probably ought to close this overlong review but it strikes me reading this book that, more than just tracking one man's journey, a good autobiography is in some ways a reflection of its time. Even if you disagree with Merton's conclusions, I think Seven Storey Mountain is fascinating in the way it depicts 20th Century America, gripped in the fated sense that war was on the horizon yet unable to fully turn to grasp the peace it so desperately craves. The story of America and the story of Merton are one and the same, except that Merton's surrendering of self spares him from the horrors of war and brings him to the resolve of solitude that he has always somehow craved.