The Letters of Robert Giroux and Thomas Merton ed. by Patrick Samway (review)

Patrick Samway, SJ is professor emeritus of English at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia and is the author (or editor) of twelve books, including Walker Percy: A Life (1997) and Educating Darfur Refugees: A Jesuit’s Efforts in Chad (2007). He was a close friend of Robert Giroux, and he has collected here the correspondence between Giroux and Thomas Merton beginning in March 1948 and ending in June 1968.

These letters reveal many hitherto forgotten (or unknown) details behind the creation and publication of Thomas Merton’s books. For instance, Giroux was responsible for the famous opening paragraph to The Seven Storey Mountain that was recently read to the U.S. Congress by Pope Francis. Merton had originally opened the book with an abstract reflection, but Giroux counseled him to cut to the chase and tell the reader immediately who he was and what was at stake in his story.

The letters reveal a lifelong friendship between Merton and Giroux. They had first met as undergraduates at Columbia University when Merton was a junior and Giroux a senior and co-editor of the Columbia Review. Giroux actually edited one of Merton’s short stories at the time. But this collection begins a little later on when Giroux is working as an editor for Harcourt, Brace & Company, and Merton – living as a monk at Gethsemani Abbey – has just published The Seven Storey Mountain.

The collection ends twenty years later, a few months before Merton left on his fatal Asian journey. In the last letters, the two friends discuss various foreign editions of Merton’s works, and Giroux suggests Merton begin thinking about putting together a collection of his literary essays. In between 1948 and 1968, we are treated to a cornucopia of discussions about literature in general and Merton’s many writing projects in particular.

Giroux, it turns out, played a key role in shaping many of Merton’s books – not only The Seven Story Mountain – but Ascent to Truth and The Secular Journal in particular. Moreover, Giroux often ran interference for Merton with the church censors by obtaining letters from figures like Jacques Maritain attesting to the value and orthodoxy of Merton’s work. Giroux also gave titles to many of Merton’s works. When Merton objected to the title Ascent to Truth because it sounded exactly like Assent to Truth which for him was far too didactic, Giroux persuaded him it was better than any of the alternatives they were then considering.

When Giroux was working with Merton, he was also editing works by T.S. Eliot, Flannery O’Connor, John Berryman, Randal Jarrell, Paul Horgan, Jack Kerouac, and Jean Stafford. So he was able to help Merton to see exactly where his writing fit in relation to the literature of his time. And the reader of these letters feels the energy and excitement of what they were accomplishing together: bringing contemplative Catholicism into dialogue with the most advanced contemporary literature of their time.

However, not all is business here. There are also many personal anecdotes and news about mutual friends and acquaintances (Robert Lax, Ed Rice, et al.). And there are telling discussions of many of the books Giroux sent Merton from New York – everything from The Selected Works of Cesare Pavese to Tom Wolfe’s Kandy-Kolored, Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby. We also learn of Merton’s bumbling of certain contract agreements and follow Giroux’s decision to leave Harcourt Brace. I was also surprised to discover that Giroux got so many letters from outraged Catholics upset that a Trappist monk – sworn to silence – would publish so many books that he even had a card printed up that read “Writing is Contemplation” which he inserted in his replies to these critics.

But these mini-dramas seem small when compared to the rich intellectual and spiritual friendship documented here and the light these letters throw on the cultural climate of the...