Twenty-five years ago I happily compared Thomas Merton to Flannery O'Connor, finding in each of them an “urgency of vision,” and although I have not changed my mind about Merton's importance, I have had to fight my way through a substantially diminished admiration. Reading him a quarter of a century later was disturbing because, bluntly put, I did not like him as much as I did when I was younger. He seemed neurotic, over-published, and extraordinarily self-centered. Had I outgrown him? The arrogance of that question paralyzed me for a month even when I could find colleagues who agreed with me, but I decided to pursue it and began by making a list of things about Merton that bothered me now in ways I never even thought of a quarter of a century ago.
