The Cloister or the World? Merton and Kerouac: Trading Places
James K. Hanna
Consider the extraordinary lives of Thomas Merton and Jack Kerouac. Contemporaries, yes, but could there be two more disparate characters? Or more dissimilar vocations? One was the “Father of the Beats” and the voice of nonconformity, the other a cloistered monk “who spoke from the world of silence to millions questing for God.” That is how The New York Times remembered them in their respective obituaries. Merton’s literary production was universally held in high esteem, while critics labeled Beat writing “zany without illumination.” Famed author Truman Capote dismissed Kerouac’s work as simply “typing.”
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