Thomas Merton and the Beat Generation: A Subterranean Monastic Community
D AVID B ELCASTRO
BY FEBRUARY OF 196 7 Merton's concerns regard ing monasticism in th e modern world had come to th e point w he re he be lieved significant change was necessary. A journal entry dated the sixth of that month reads :
Monasticism. I see mor e and more t h e danger of identifying the monastic vocation and spirit with a p articular kind of monastic consciousness-a parti c ular traditi o n, h o wever auth en ti c. A monasticism limited to the medieval western - or worse still Byzantine - traditi on canno t survive . It i s utterly finished. I ve r y much wonder how much th e Rule of St Be nedict can survive in practice. This is a very seri ous question. Maybe monasticism ne eds to b e s tated all over again in a new way. I have no knowing how to tackle this idea. It is jus t beginning to dawn on me 1
After reading Lew i s Hyde's Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth, and Art ,2 I began to explore the pos sibility o f understanding M erto n's efforts to redefine mona sticism i n light of the tricks ter tradition . In 'An Inquiry into Merton as Trickster,' 3 I demonstrated that th e primary characteristics of the tri ckster are present in Merton, not as marginal but as essen tial qualities of his person , in particular, the inclination to redefine establi shed institutions. At the end of that paper, I suggested several lines of inquiry for further study, one of which was his place within the American tradition of tricksters , specifically, his relation to Beat writers, a connection that has long been recognized but n o t as yet fully explo red . 4
A study of Merton's relationship to th e Beat generation provides insight into his effort to find ways to r e defin e monasticism in and for th e modern world. Thi s paper will focus on wha t I believe to have
been at the core o f this relationship an d ho w it eventuall y b ecame an essential aspe c t of hi s monastic ide ntity.
T he Re latio nship
W hil e l ess celebrated tha n h is vis i t wi th the Dalai Lama, Merton's s tay wi th Lawrence Fe rlin ghett i at the Ci ty Ligh ts apartment in San Fr ancis co during May of 1968 was no n e th eless a pilg r image in its o wn ri ght. s City Lights bookstore had become a Mecca for Beat writer s and artists; an ope n p l ace where no rm all y apo li ti cal perso n s could sp eak uncensor ed upon any subject regarding th e s ubor dinatio n of h u man life an d fr eedo m to p o liti cal ideolo gies , s tru ctures, an d programs . Fo r th is r eason , Merton's work ca u ght th e a t tention of Beat w r i ters; in pa rticular, th e logic of such statements as:
We eq uate sanit y wi. th a sense o f justice, with humaneness, with pruden ce , wi th th e ca p acity to love and unde r stand o ther p eople.
We rely on the sane people of the wo r l d to p reserve it from barbarism, madness, dest ructi on. And now i t b eg in s Lo dawn on us that it i s p recisely the sane ones w h o are the most dangerous. 6
In 1961, Ferlinghe tti7 pub lish e d Merton's 'Chant to Be U sed in Pr ocessio ns Aro u nd A Si te W i th Furnaces' in the first edi ti on ofJournal for the Protec tion of All Beings.8 Mer ton's poem was printed fi rst in a se ries of writings by Gar y Snyder, Gr egory Corso, Michael McClure, Allen Ginsb erg. Willia m Burro ughs, and ot hers. By the time of Merton's vis it, h e was we ll e s tablished w ithin the Beat communi t y. With regard to th e vi sit , a line from Mer ton 's letter to Ping Ferry may be all that is need e d: ' Saw Ferlinghetti in S.F. and drank so me espresso wi th vis io n aries.' 9
Thi s gat herin g of visionaries or i ginat e d on th e East coast at Columbia Uni ve r s ity. Jack Kerouac , Alle n Ginsberg, and Lucie n Ca r r en ter ed Columbi a shortly after Merton left in 1940 . Ferlingh et ti wo uld arr i ve in 1946. All s tudied w i th Raymo nd Weave r, Lionel Trilling, an d Mark Van Doren. 10 The li ves of th ese young w riters were s hap ed by th e Colum bia ex perience in simila r ways as refl ected in Love and Li ving w her e Merton wrote, 'Be anything you like, be m adm en, drunks, and ba stard s of ever y sh ape and form, but at all costs avo id one thing: su ccess .' This, h e declar e d, w a s hi s m essage for hi s co n tempo ra ries. It was a message h e attributed to his e du cation at Columbia . There, h e tells us, h e learned the val ue o f ' un su ccess.' There h e was ' saved ...
from one of thos e Ma d ison Avenue jobs.'There he was ' lobbed . .. half conscious into th e Village, w h ere he came to his se n ses and con ti nued to learn to i mitate no t Ro ckefell er but Th oreau.' 11 Such a statement coul d ju s t a s eas ily h ave b een w ritten b y Ginsberg. It was at Columbia tha t Gin sberg's aspiration s to be come a l abour lawyer were waylaid . It was there that h e began to w rit e wild and bewildering p o e tr y abou t the bes t minds of his generatio n w h o stud ied Plotin us, Po e , St John o f the Cross , and b op kabbalah, ' b ecause th e cos mos ins tin ctively vi b r ated at their fee t.' 12 As o n e per son wou l d later testi fy, Gin sberg ' s pe r sonal view of life was colored b y his exposure to jazz and Colum b i a Univers ity w h e r e he received a lib eral and bohemian ed u cation . 13
Whil e Merton n ever met Kerouac o r Ginsb erg, publishers Giroux, Laughlin and Ferlinghetti, as we ll as friends Rob ert La x an d Ron Seitz , wo uld provid e th e necess ary connections for w hat wo uld perhaps be b est desc rib e d a s solitar y ships pass ing in the nig h t. There we re other s, howeve r, who came to Gethsemani. From 1958 to 1968, Merton's journals and co rrespond en ce reveal th e development o f h i s rel ation ship to the Beat generation, to include Gary Sn yder, Deni se Levertov, Diana De Pr ima, Bro ther Ant onius, Cid Corm an , and Joan Baez. Me rton's let te r to Laughlin in February of 19 5 8 e xplains h ow all this came about:
Larry Ferlinghetti 's stuff so unds interes ting. I now have permission to read anything so th ere are no problems abou t the nature of the material... Arn interes ted in everything tha t i s alive , and anything that strikes you as som e thin g I ought to kn ow abou t, please send. 14 Laughlin wo uld send Beat b o oks. And , by Marc h o f 1 96 0, Merton was enco urag i n g Lau ghlin to bring Kerouac , Lax, and a few ot h e r s d own to Gethsemani to so lve t he problems of the wo rld. 15
How M e r to n Und e r stoo d t h e Rel at i o nship
Defi niti ons of Beat va ry and include a var iet y of alt ernatives: bea tnik, n eo-beat, contem p orari es of beats, each sug gesting so mething different wi th regard to th e nature of th e re l at i onship. Merton i d entifie d himse lf as a 'fr i end of th e beats.' In a letter to William Carlos Williams d ated 11th J uly 1961, M ert o n wro t e:
It has taken me a lo n g time to get to be able to follow yo ur advice and read Kaddi sh rand Other Poems], beca u se n obody sent m e one. But
finally Laughlin is out in SF and the City Lights Books se nt me a copy. I agree with you about it. I think it is great and living poetry and certainly religiou s in it s concern. In fact, who are more concerned with ultimates than the beats? Why do you think that just because I am a monk I should be likely to shrink from beats? Who am I to shrink from anyone, I am a monk, ther efore by defmition, as I understand it, the chief friend of the beats and one w ho has no business reproving them. And why sh o uld I? 16
But it was a precarious friendship. For example, by October of 1966, Merton could write:
I found some good things in the library-old articles on Camus from the immediate post-war years (1946-). And some [Gregory] Corso, R[ob er t] Creely and oth ers not so good (I still can't read Charles Olson). I very much doub t wheth er I ca n or should ge t involved in this kind of poetry-or at least not with the people who want it. I' ve had enough with the pontifi cal Cid Corman. Maybe they all want to be gurus as well as poets . 17
While Merton and Ginsberg h ad been reading each other's books, there was a tension between these two men. In an article printed in Harpers, November of 19 65, Merton wrote:
The South American poets who had a meeting in Concepcion, Chile, la st winter, considered the two Americans present to b e "innocents"-should one say fools? Especially one-wh o was continually making a huge fuss about how poets needed lots of drugs and sex and was always the first one to go home.
The two poets were Ferlinghetti and Ginsberg, Ginsberg being the on e making the fuss about drugs an d sex. This difference of opini o n on sex and drugs marked th e relationship from the beginning as indi ca ted by Ginsberg's journal entry of Aug u s t 1955 of a dream h e had of Merton after reading Tears of the Blind Lion:
Saw Fr Thomas Merton in the halls, come on a visit to the house, dressed in swinging robes - we talked, he brought a friend, I looked in the bathroom to see friend - a redhead (hipster looking) with small ra t red mouth & pale skin, and another cat - H e says, "I need to be told how I look," la u ghing, he's English-like, I say - "Still pimply adolescence not grown old - rather like Hamlet" (he looks awful but I don't want to insult him too much) with his long cassock & I notice big ungainly legs & wide effeminate ass underneath, and like Auden probably tits on flabby chest and like Hollander long arms, then this head of his which is young English schoolboy big-eared - I say "Tell me once & for all about this divine
ecstasy - does it come once or often? How long does it las t? Is it long or shor t ? How man y times etc .?" This after I said he was like Hamlet. My feeling a mixture of affection envy & contempt for his body - I thought, with an ass like that no wonde r he's a mystic, 0 well he's no wo rse than anyone trying LO escape not getting laid. 18
The dream reveals radic ally different attitudes regarding the body; attitudes that initially separated the celibate monk and the gay poet.
With time, however, the body would become common ground. Compare , for example, the following two po ems. The first is an excerpt from Ginsberg's "Song." The weight of the world is love.
Under the burden of soli tude . under the burden of dissatisfaction the weigh t the weight we carry is love
The warm bodies shine together in the darkness, the hand moves to the center of the fles h, the sk in trembles in the hap piness and the soul comes joyful to th e eyeyes, yes, that's what I wanted, I always wanted, I always wanted, to r eturn to the body where I was born.
The second is from Merton's "May Song."
I t is May
We weep for love
In the imperfect wood
In the land of b o di es
0 lonely little b oat
Carr y me away
Across the sea of w i ne
0 small strong boat
Bring me
My child .
What Merton Found of Value in the Relationship
Th e re are tw o phra s es that provid e so m e insig ht into w ha t Merton val ued in this relationship: ' Christians turned inside out' and 'monks in revers e.' Both refer, in d ifferent ways, to th e b o d y as an essential aspect of the conte mplati v e life.
The first phra se , 'Chr istians turned inside o ut,' occurs in r eference to non-Christian w ri ters w ho are, none-the - less, of valu e to t h e person living the contemplative life. On 24th Octo b er 1958 , Merton's ' Poetr y and Cont emplation: A Reappraisal' appeared in Commonwea l. 19 In this article, Merton wrote :
A sincere and efficacious desire to enter more deepl y into the beauty o f the Christian mystery implies a willingness to sacrifi ce the thin gs w hi c h ar e call ed "beautiful" b y th e de cadent standards of a m a terialistic worl d . Ye t the Ch rist i a n contemplative need n ot co nfm e himself t o religious , st ill l ess to professi ona lly "pio u s" models . .. One might add th at a fully integrated vi sion o f our time and of its s p i ri t p r esu pp os e s so me co nt act w ith the ge n ius of Baude lai re and Rimbaud , who are Christians turn e d inside o ut.
Baudelaire and , in p arti c ula r, Rimb aud wer e predecessors to th e Beats. Th e lin e' full y integ rat ed vis i o n of our time an d of its spirit ' sh ed s som e lig ht on th e phrase 'Christi an s turne d inside out.' The re are two kin ds of Chris ti a n s. Th e r e are right - si de - out Chris tians and in side-o ut ones . It i s only b y recognizing both sides tha t one can have a 'fully in teg ra te d vision.' So , w hat makes so m eone li ke Rimbaud an insi de -out Christian ? They approach th e Go spel fro m the inside o ut , from th e bo dy, from the desires of the body, or as E. M . Forster says, 'the h o liness of dir ect desire.' MERTON
In a letter to Bruno Paul Schlesinger dated 13th December 1 961, Me rto n stresses th e imp ortance of this human dimension: Th a t we h ave come to a certai n ki nd of "end" of the deve lopment o f Western Chri stia nity i s no accident. .. the sur vival of re ligion as an ab st ra ct formality without a hum ani st matrix, religion apar t from man and almost in som e sense apart from God Hims elf .. i s killing religi on in our midst today, n ot the a theists . So that one who seeks God w it hout c ul ture and witho u t hu man is m tends in evita bl y t o promote a relig ion tha t is irreligious and eve n unconsciousl y atheis t ic... So rr y if I sound like a bea tnik, but th is is wha t i s driving intelligent people as far from Ch ris tiani ty as they can travel. H ence, in o ne wor d, a pr etende d Christianity, w i thout the hu man dimensions whic h nature he rsel f has provided, our relig ion becomes a lunar landsca pe of m eaningless ges t u res and obse rv ances. 20
The second phrase, 'mo nks i n rev erse ,' occurs in the follo wi ng manne r. On 18th September 1966, Merton wrote to The NewYorker in response to an article that they had printed at the time o f Lenny Bruce 's death. In The New Yorker for Aug ust 2 0 - w hich I h ave just n ow hap pened to see - th ere is a paragrap h in "Talk of th e Town" about Lenny Bruce and Bud Powe ll. I w as ver y moved by it. H aving been fo r qui te some time i n a monaster y I had never h ad any o ccasi on t o hear - or even to hea r of - e ither Lenny Bruce... What I would like to know is th is: h ow can I now hear what Lenny Bruce was saying, and learn m o r e about the struggl e h e had to face-dou btless much of it against m y Church, or represe n ta t ives of i t. Woul d it be p ossible for th e wri ter of that par agraph to g e t in tou ch wi th me and fi ll me in a little o n this situati on, and perhaps se nd me references that I co uld co n sult ? I would be very grate ful. Need I add th at m y inte re st is entirel y sympath e tic to Lenny Bruce and w h at h e was e videntl y tr ying to achi eve? 21
Eig ht een m o nth s later, Marc h of 1968 , Merton re ceived a co p y of The Essential Lenn y Bruce22 a s a g ift from Lionel Landr y. 23 Merton wro te to
Landry:
I looked s traig h t at the back and foun d that ac tua ll y what he did was a marvel o u s adaptation o f a m u ch longer and mor e intrica te p oem of m i ne . Th i s w as the same poem, but cut down to a seri es of left hook s for the n ig h t club o r wher ever he did i t, a nd mu ch funni er. My own i s ve ry dour and quiet , thi s is rambuncti ous and wild.
Lawren ce Sc hille r, in hi s book, Ladies and Gentlemen: Lenny Bruc e, 24 tell s about th e routine th at w a s based on 'A D evout Medita tion in Memo r y
o f Ado lf Ei ch m ann ,' w ith overtones from 'Chan t to Be Used in Processions Aro u n d A Site Wi th Furna ces.'
Some nights h e would end his act wi th a b it that had no precedent i n the histo r y of Amer i can night d u b hum or. It was inspired by a poem by Thomas Mer t o n th at Lenny h ad read and tr easured for a couple of years It was much t oo stro n g for a nightclub audience. Lenny h ad been holding back with it, wai ting till th e time was right. Now was t he ti me Every n i gh t he would enact t hat chilling poem. H e wou ld call for a si n gle pin spot. Then he would put on a very straight German accent. Staring st e rnly a t the audience, he was Adol f Eic hmann st anding in the dock: My name is Adolf Eichmann. The Jews came every day to vat they th ought vould be fun in the showers.
Merton's re spon se? 'People like Lenny Bruce are r eally monks in r everse an d he n c e I feel mu ch closer t o them th an I do to say the President of General Motors.' T h is curio u s phrase , ' monks in reverse' is perhaps b est understood in light of the NewYo rk Times article that he h ad read. 25
Lenny Bruce . . . h ad a huge appetite for life, in all its tran sience, absurdity, and potentiality. W h at he wanted was to make it all more r eal, to startle hi s listeners in t o r ealizing h ow m uch they were mi ssing as a result of their evasions. He kept aski ng them, as they laughed, why certai n wo r ds we r e "obscen e." W h o h ad made them "obsce n e," and why? Similarly, he insi sted o n exploring - w i th a b iza rr e accuracy of perception - the chasm between Ch risti ani t y and churc h e s, b etween love a n d ma rr iage, between law a n d la wye r s, between th e urge n cy of fantasies and th e insubstantial safety o f "normality." He had no progra mm atic answers. His delight was in questionin g tho se w h o had given u p trying to fmd answers. But the q u estioning wa s never malicious ; it was affectingas well as risi b ly - hopeful.
W i th this in mind, Mer t on may have been suggesting that there are two kinds of monks ; one th at moves in forward direction and another in reverse. If the ab ove descr ipti on i s of a mo n k in reverse, we may conclud e that this kind of monk engages the world i n playful antics of a backward sor t w ith the hope of op ening a l arger vi si o n of life in all i ts grandeur that incl udes rath e r than excl ud es the body and all of th e ex p erien ces of the b ody.
These two references indicate th at Merto n h ad come to recog ni ze that th ere wer e individuals w ho were fulfilling th e ro l es of monks in th e modern worl d, even th o u g h in r eve r se and from the in side o ut. As Mer t on expl ains in a l e t ter to Parra: 'today th e p oets and o th er arti s ts
tend to fulfill many of the fun c ti ons th at were o n ce the monopoly of monks-and wh i c h o f co ur se the monks have ma de has t e to aba ndon, i n ord er to center themselves fi rmly in th e midst of a squ are soci e t y.' So, for ward moving m onks, th e o n es w h o wear th ei r h abits right si de out, fit th e square wo rld . T h e Beat generation, on the other hand, are monks who are m ovin g in re ver se w i th their h ab its on in side out; they n ei the r fit nor care to fit in sq uare socie t y. The y li ve outside the square establi shm ent, beyond social conventio n s. The y situa te themse lves between society's r estric tions and the indi vidual's freedom to explore an d di scove r his or h er true humanit y at the deepest possible le ve l.
This noti o n of a diffe rent order of monk had b een devel opin g si n ce the late 19 5 Os and i s more full y und er s to o d in light of Merton's correspond ence wi th Milosz, and his work on Camus . I t is a notion, however, that finds its theological roots i n Clement of Alexa ndria . In hi s co rre spon dence w ith Milosz, Merton works out an und er s tanding o f solidar ity w ith those who risk everything for th e third position that refuses to allow life to be su bordinated t o p o liti cal agenda. In h i s essays o n Camu s, Merton works at d evelo pin g mutu al understanding wi th a non-Christian wi th w h om h e has found common gro und a s reflected in hi s reference to Ca mu s as ' th at Algerian ceno bi te : In Clement ofAlex andria , Merton found a model for his approach to the wo rld , one th at affirmed, rath er than n egated the world whereby those outside the in stituti onal Church may non eth e less participate i n the Gospel.
Merton fo und in th e Be at generatio n m o nk s in the mo dern world w h o sta nd outside the s tructures of their day, r iski ng ever y thin g for the third posit ion th a t rebels aga i ns t th e sub ordinati o n of human life to power and authority in vested i n soci al institutions. H e saw their work as compatibl e w ith the Gospel. Living outside monas ti c wa ll s, these monks howled th rough the dark h ours of th e night in t h e stree ts of Amer i ca. Merton was thei r friend: a friend w h o recogn i zed and valu e d w h at they had to o ffer.
It was that howling or hullabaloo that caught Mert o n's attention. He r ecog nized in them what was of val u e to him as he was tr yin g to r edefi n e hi s monastic voc ati on. Merton's poem , 'Five Virgins,' wr it ten during a time of i nt en se interest in th e Beats, reveals wha t it was.
The re were five howling vi r gins
Who came
To the Wedding of the Lamb
With th e ir disa bled motorcycles
And their o il Lanks
Empty
But since they knew ho w
To dance
A person says to them
To stay anyhow.
And th ere you have it :
There we r e five no isy virgins
W i thout gas
But looking good
In the u·affic of the dance
Consequently
Ther e were ten virgins
At the Weddi ng of the Lamb. H owlin g o r hullabaloo (c razin ess that m akes a l o t of noise a cco mpanie d b y disorder) described Merton 's s tate of mind at this time. Th e jo urnal entries around th is date indi cate his ongo ing s truggl e to mo ve more d eepl y in to s il ence and solitud e w hil e, at the same time, ver y mu ch engaged and fru s tra t e d by numerous iss ues ranging from political activism to theological wrangli ng, as well as , hi s relationship w ith M that he r eferred t o a s 'hullabaloo.' As difficult as th ese contradic tions were , he accepted th em, understanding them as essen ti al aspects of his monas tic i denti ty. Hullabaloo had found a permanent pla ce in h is life. Faith cou ld no long er b e unders tood as an evasion o f th e absurd via endless e x planations bu t rath er a partic ular way of en co unt ering the absurd as suggested in this p oem .
How i s one to face th e absurd? With th e reference to dancing virgins , we see th e converging of two ideas th at Merto n h ad b ee n ent e rtaining for so m e tim e : th e metap h o r of the dance for the contemplati ve life an d the idea of le poi nt vierge 26 or w hat he wo uld so m eti m es r e fer to as the ' s till poi nt' or the 'thir d po si tio n.' It seems reasonabl e to suggest that b ehind th e i mages of thi s poe m is an emer ging insight that the h owlin g virgin s w ho kno w h ow to d anc e at le point vierge partici pate in the we d ding of th e Lamb. Le poi nt vie rg e i s a m etaphysical reali ty and the inclusi on of the howling vi rgins in th e wed ding of th e Lamb is transforming hi s monastic co mmunity in
su c h a w ay that it included persons who we could e a sily imagine arri ving at Gethse m ani on m otorcycles. His und er s t anding of the co nt emplati ve life as the obedie n ce and vigilance of wise virgins w as s hifting to include the talents o f thos e confused v irgins w h o arriv e late but get in anyway becaus e they are good l oo king and know h ow to dance.
Who might Merton have had in mind ? Around this time, Merto n received a letter from James Laughlin regarding Bob Dylan's motorcycl e acciden t. Four months earlier, Merton t old Laughlin that he had b ee n li s tening to Dylan 's la t est album , Bringing ItAIJ Back Home. Merton had d evelop e d an interest in Dylan as a poet and s o cial p h enom eno n, as had many of th e Beats . Merton referred to Dyl an's mu sic as the new liturgy.27 Int ending to write an essay on Dylan, h e aske d Laughlin to send him articles regarding the y oung ro ck singer. Stra nge as this may so und, it h ad become more characteri stic th an un characteristic of Merton during th ese ye ars. It reve als something of the nature of Merton's growing c ircle of friends outside the wa ll s of Ge th se mani. He had known for so me time that h e n eed ed contact w i th a broader co mmunity. 28 During these yea r s, Merton 's monast ic comm unit ythat i s to say his idea of that community or, specifically, his mon astic identi ty - was goin g through a trans formation. H e foun d solidarity with anot h e r kind of monk , one as essential to th e wedding of the Lamb a s th ose h e had found w ithin the m onastic walls o f Gethsemani. Solidarity-yes. I can see it is going to b e a s t ra n ge kind of und er gro un d solidarity perhaps , wit h peop le who k n ow they ca nn o t b elong to the w orld of the establish me n t, organi ze d insanit y. Who p er haps h ave som e other, slightl y b ett er, in sani t y-that may make sense if anyon e sur vives. 29
Conclusion
Merton re co gnized th a t th ese wayward virgins who desir e d to be saints as h e did h ad some thing of value to offer th ose w h o r e main vigilant in solemn processions. 'Five Virgins' r evea ls w ha t h e had found of importance in this rel a tionship , as well as, how it was unfolding into his effort s to unde rstan d monasticis m in a new way. The Bea ts r epresented th e hullabaloo, the absurd, the mys terium tremendum. Thi s strange and unpredic ta ble mov em ent of God, Mer ton beli eved, h ad b ee n walled ou t b y th e old monas tic sys tem . So h e redefined his m o na stic identity to include body and s o ul, th e s acred and the profane,
order and chaos, tradition and improvisation. He did this by integrating back into his life that w hich he had left o utside w h en h e entered the monas ter y, that w hich had taken shape in him a t Columbia and now presen ted itself to him in the Beats. For Merton, th is was the o nly way in w hich monasticism could be redefined. Having embodied this new unders tanding of w hat it m eans to b e a monk with in himself, h e had in effect brought a n ew monastic order into the worl d. Cons tructing a monastic id entity that consisted of th ese two dimensions, o n e constructed above ground, one subterranean, h e became the new monk wherein the subterranean world of the body would be ·allowed to enrich and inform a new way of b ei ng a monk.
Notes and Referenc es
1. Thomas Merton, Learning to Love:Th eJournal s ofThomas Merion Vol. 6 1966 -1967 (ed. Christine M. Bochen). San Francisco, HarperSanFrancisco, 199 7 p. 19 3
2. Lewis H yde , Trickster MakesThis World: Mischief, My th, and Ar t. New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux , 1998
3. Paper presented at th e ITMS Conference i n 1999
4. Brother John Alber t, O.C.S.O., 'Ace of Songs -Ace ofFreedom:Th o mas Merton and Bob Dylan,' TheArnerican Benedictine Review (Marc h 1986) pp.67-95; Ron Seitz, A Song for Nobod y, Misso uri, Liguori Publicat io n s, 19 9 3; Rob ert Ginn, ' The Paradox of Solitu de: Jack Kerouac and Thomas Merton,' The Merton Seasonal Vol. 24 (1 ), 1999, pp. 1 8- 2 6; Ang u s Stuart, 'Vision s o ffom : Jack Kerouac's Monastic Elder Brother,' Th eMertonJou rnalVol. 8 (1), 200 1 , pp.40 - 46; Peter C. Ki n g, 'Roots &Wings:Thomas Merton &Alan Watts as Twenti e th Cen t ur y Archetypes,' The MertonJournalVol. 8 (2), 200 1, pp.3 6-4 4
5. For Merton's account of th is visi t , see Lea rn ing to Love, op.cit. pp.101 - 102; 120. For Ferlin ghetti's , see: Merton By ThoseWh o Knew Him Best (ed . Paul Wilkes) , San Francisco, Harper & Row, 1984 , pp . 29-31
6. Michael Schum acher, Dharma Lion:A Biography ofAllen Ginsberg. New York , St. Ma r tin's Press, 1992, p. l 01
7. Thomas Merton, The Courage for Truth: Letters to Writers (ed. Chris tine M. Boch en). NewYork , Farrar, Strau s & Giroux , 1 993 , pp.26 7 - 272
8. Journal for the Protection ofAll Beings, (ed. Michael McClure, Lawrence Ferlinghe tti, David Meltzer). San Francis co, City Lights Books, 19 6 1
9. Thomas Merton, The Hidden Ground of Love, (ed. William H. Shannon). New Yor k, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1 985, p.239
10 For two accoun ts of the se years at Columbia, see: Michael Schumacher, Dharma Lion;A Critical Biography ofAllen Ginsberg, New York, St. Martin's Press, 1992 , pp. 23-48 ; Barry Miles, Ginsberg:ABiography, New Yo rk, Simon and Schuster, 1989, pp.36-42
11 Th omas Merton , Love and Living, (ed. Naomi Burton Stone and Brother Patrick Hart). NewYork, Farrar, Strau s, Giroux, 1979, pp. 11 - 12
12. Allen Ginsberg, 'Howl' in Howl and Other Poems. San Francisco, Ci ty Lights Books, 1956
13. Barry Silesky, Ferlinghctti:TheArtist in HisTime. New York, Warner Books, 1990, p.76
14. Thomas Merton and James Laughlin: Selected Le uers, (ed. David D. Cooper). New York, W WNorton, 1997 , p.136
15 Ibid p. I 56
16.Thomas Merton, The Courage for Truth, op.cit. pp.289 -290
17 .Thomas Merton, Learning to Love, op.cit. p.148
18.Allen Ginsberg .Journals Mid-Fifties 1954- 1958 ( ed. Gordon Ball). New York, Harper Collins , 199 5, p.154
19. Thomas Merton , The Literary Essays ofThomas Merton (ed. Patrick H art). NewYork, New Directions, 1 98 1 , p.346
2 0. Tho mas Merton, The Hidden Grou nd ofLove, op. cit. p .54 2
2 1.Thomas Merton, The Road to Joy :Lett ers to New and Old Friends (ed . Robert E. Daggy) . New York, Farrar, Straus , Giroux, 1989 , p.34 2
2 2. Lenny Bruce, The Essential Lenny Bruce (ed. John Cohen). New York , Ballantine, 1967
2 3. Jo h n Howard Griffi n , Follow the Ecstasy. Fort Wo r th ,Texas, La titudes Press Books, 1983 , p.191
2 4. Albert Goldman, from the journalism ofLawrence Schiller, Ladies and Gendemen: Lenny Bruce, New Yo rk, Penguin Books, 19 91, pp.454-457
25. NewYorkTimes, 8/20/66
2 6. Thomas Merton, Turning Toward theWorld:The Journals ofThomas MertonVol. 4 1960- 1963 (ed. Victor A. Kramer). San Francisco, Harper SanFrancisco, 1996, pp.235-236
27 .Thomas Merton , Learning to Love, op.cit. p .3 09
28. Ib id. p.208
29. Ib id. p.245