In considering the Merton literary output, one is amazed by the sheer quantity of it. That a monk, whose daily life was fairly rigorously regulated by a monastic routine that gave him only limited time for writing, should produce more than forty books and some sixty or more journals and reading notebooks, a thousand pages of poetry and upwards of 4,000 letters, boggles the mind. Of course, sheer quantity establishes no claim to lasting survival and not everything Merton wrote deserves to survive, as he himself recognized. In 1967, Merton did a self-evaluation of thirty-one of his books. Using six categories (ranging from "Best" to "Awful"), he lists fourteen as "Better," six as "Good," six as "Fair," three as "Poor." For the categories "Bad" and "Awful," he has one each. He lists none of his works as a "Best." I would venture to say that "devotional" and "inspirational" works (like The Living Bread, which Merton classifies as "Poor") are destined for literary demise. But there are other books that, while addressing the concrete circumstances of his own time with clarity and authenticity, have a quality of insight into the human condition that transcends his own generation.

My tentative list would begin with The Seven Storey Mountain, a smash hit in 1948, which sold 600,000 copies in its first year and continues year after year to attract readers. If one accepts T. S. Eliot's rather pragmatic definition of a "classic" as "a work that stays in print," The Mountain has met the test for forty years, and all the signs point to continued popularity. I would also include New Seeds of Contemplation (a far better book than its predecessor, Seeds of Contemplation) and the Merton journals: The Sign of Jonas (a favorite of so many Merton readers), Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (not actually a single journal, but made up of items from journals covering the period 1956–65), and the recently issued The Vow of Conversation (a journal of 1964–65). My list would include a fairly large sampling of Merton's letters (in which his humanity shines in both its greatness and its weakness); healthy selections from his poetry; and essays. To give one example of the latter: "Philosophy of Solitude" in Disputed Questions is a superb study of a fundamental need that women and men of every age and place have experienced.

Merton's works, if they survive, will do so because of their autobiographical character. In some sense practically everything he wrote is in one way or another autobiographical. Merton himself realized this aspect of his writing. As early as 1949, he recorded in his journal: "Every book I write is a mirror of my own character and conscience." I believe that it is this autobiographical strain that draws and will continue to draw people to his writings.

I stress the importance of the autobiographical thrust of Merton's writings because so many readers around the world are able to identify their story with his—a human person struggling to find meaning and to confront the absurdity that life so often appears to be. Merton knew loneliness and alienation. His clay feet are visible for us to see. Like ourselves he had attachments of which he had to rid himself and illusions he had to unmask. No wonder that, as his books mirrored his "own character and conscience," his readers found themselves mirrored as well.

But the fact that we find our stories in his does not, of itself, offer sufficient reason why his writing ought to survive. There are other people with whom we can identify in a shared humanness. What makes the difference with Thomas Merton are the special gifts he had: a deep wisdom and a marvelous facility with words. He could reach into the human heart and surface for his readers questions that, till they read him, lay hidden and unasked, struggling for expression. Though Merton was not a creative thinker, he was a creative synthesizer: he knew how to raise to a new level of understanding people's perception of God, prayer, and human life.

In short, Merton is a person who, through his writings, enters into conversation with you. He tells about himself and you see not only yourself, but every person. He writes autobiography and we find biography—our own. He digs so deeply into raw humanity that his words will reach women and men for ages to come.

It is perhaps no accident that in the last year of his life, Merton was much occupied with reflection on transculturation, whereby a person transcended a particular culture by being at home in all cultures. Thomas Merton was received into the Roman Catholic church on November 16, 1938. He became a citizen of the United States on June 22, 1951. But Merton does not belong to the Roman Catholic church. Nor does he belong to the U.S. The religious traditions of a whole humanity filtered through his fertile mind and enriched his own faith with an ever expanding catholicity. The lives and destinies of humanity touched his person and made him, as far as this is possible, a world citizen.

Besides Merton's own literary output, there are the works which his writings have inspired: books, articles and dissertations (111 of them!). Merton's classification of his own books may appropriately be applied to these. This would reveal a rather uneven picture and not an especially happy one: very few works that could be called "Better" and perhaps a reasonable number of "Good"; but all too many would qualify only as "Fair," "Poor," "Bad," or even "Awful." This may seem like a harsh evaluation, but I am convinced that Merton deserves better treatment than he has so far received. I also have the feeling that many of my colleagues would agree that Merton scholarship is still in its infancy or at best in adolescence.

What ought to be the future direction of Merton studies? The first task is the publication of what is as yet unpublished: journals, letters, and taped talks. There are four journals, 1956–68, that by Merton's will were restricted from publication for twenty-five years after his death. These can be published in 1993. There are more than sixty other journals and reading notebooks, which contain valuable material and, with careful editing ought to be published in conjunction with the restricted journals. There will be no great surprises or new revelations when the remaining journals are published. They were available to Merton's authorized biographer, Michael Mott, who gives generous excerpts from them.

Only the first of five projected volumes of letters has so far appeared. Called The Hidden Ground of Love, it includes more than 700 letters on religious experience and social concerns. The second volume (called The Road to Joy, letters to family, friends, young people, etc.) should be in print by the spring of 1989. The third volume (on monastic renewal and spiritual direction) is near completion in typescript, and the fourth (dealing with Merton's contacts with poets and other writers) is in preparation. Volume five of the letters will include correspondence that did not fit the other volumes; it will also contain a chronology of all of Merton's letters and an extensive index.

Finally, there are hundreds of taped talks. Many were intended for a limited audience within the monastery and need judicious editing. A number of such tapes; recently published, show little sign of editing and project a mediocrity onto Thomas Merton that is both misleading to readers and unfair to him.

Besides these three areas, there is a good bit of unpublished material dealing with the monastic life (for example, notes Merton used with the young monks he taught). These would have only restricted appeal and probably will not be published.

A critical study, or even a critical edition, of The Seven Storey Mountain is very much needed. This is the book that "launched" Merton's career as a writer. Much of what he writes later flows out of the metaphors, symbols, and reflections found in that book. It is a young monk reflecting on a young man's life and in some ways setting a future agenda: metaphors he was to live out and develop further, as well as others that later he would reject.

The Merton poetry exists in somewhat unmanageable form: a huge volume of over a thousand pages, with no introduction or notes. A fair amount of it is mediocre or just plain bad, but one will also find fine poetry there. A valuable Merton project would be to make a discriminating selection from among the eight poetry collections (1940–63). Such a selection of the best poetry, with an introduction and critical notes, would open up Merton's least-known writings. His last two volumes of poetry, Cables to the Ace and The Geography of Lograire, could receive the same treatment, but as individual works complete in themselves.

A similar selection of important essays could be made, again with proper critical notes and introduction. This would be of special value to the growing number of teachers who offer courses on Merton, or to people who would like to indulge themselves in a "home" study. Of value might be an updated revision of The Thomas Merton Reader or a new reader that would offer a representative selection of Merton writing, including some of the posthumously published works.

These are but a brief sampling of possible directions in which Merton scholarship and publishing might move. Thematic studies have been done, especially in dissertations, but these will best be done when all the Merton material is finally published.

An important priority for Merton scholars is to establish more contact between specialists in religious studies, theology, or spirituality and specialists in literature. Some time ago I was talking with a friend who is a teacher of literature and a highly respected scholar in the field of nineteeth-century Romantic poetry. In the course of our conversation, he said: "We people in literature do not take Thomas Merton seriously." My suggestion was that maybe they should. It is unfortunate that Merton has been seen as the almost exclusive "possession" of people in the field of religion and spirituality. Some Merton scholars are in the field of literature, but not enough. There is a need for discussions between the various disciplines. Only then can we address an important question: is Merton to be classified as a "religious" writer, with the inevitable restrictions that such a classification would impose in terms of potential readers, or is he a figure in American literature and one to be reckoned with, at that?

William H. Shannon, "The Future of Thomas Merton: Sorting Out the Legacy," in Commonweal, Vol. CXV, No. 21, December 2, 1988, pp. 649-52.