The Cloister or the World?

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.”

Merton and Kerouac never met and appear to have had little in common. The monk and the Beat — as different as chalk and cheese. But were they? Both were American writer-poet-mystics who emerged in the mid-20th century after attending Columbia University, where they studied literature under Mark Van Doren. Both were countercultural, engaging the world in ways few other Catholics did. Kerouac asserted that the Beats should be understood in the context of the poverty Christ mentions in the Beatitudes, which was also central to Merton’s monasticism. Yet both men struggled at times to live the faith they professed, with Merton often criticized for straying from Catholic orthodoxy, Kerouac for his bohemian lifestyle, and both for exploring Buddhism and Asian philosophy.

Merton and Kerouac both had a much-loved brother whose early death was deeply felt. For Kerouac, the loss of his brother was the genesis for his book Visions of Gerard, and for Merton it was the genesis for his poem “For my Brother: Reported Missing in Action, 1943.” Both understood the sacramental nature of language — and the sacramental language of nature. Both writers were influenced by the work of poet William Blake and were wide-ranging in their spiritual pursuits — devoted to St. Thérèse of Lisieux, while philosophically interested in Zen Buddhism. Both were inveterate diarists, recording their thoughts, passions, and personal struggles with daily life, women, and alcohol in journals and letters. And, finally, their mortal lives ended a year apart, as both died tragic, early deaths — Merton at 53 in 1968, Kerouac at 47 in 1969. Both received the Last Rites of the Church.

Those familiar with Kerouac’s life can easily see him writing, “I wanted to be a writer, a poet, a critic, a professor. I wanted to enjoy all kinds of pleasures of the intellect and senses, and in order to have those pleasures I did not hesitate to place myself in situations which I knew would end in spiritual disaster — although generally I was so blinded by my own appetites that I never clearly considered this fact until it was too late and the damage was done.” Except Kerouac didn’t write those words; Merton did, in his bestselling The Seven Storey Mountain. It was Merton’s self-assessment in his mid-20s, prior to entering the monastery.