Merton and Waugh

Thomas Merton

Merton and Waugh, by Mary Frances Cody (Paraclete Press, 2015), recounts a relatively brief period from August 2, 1948, to February 25, 1952, during which the American author and monk Thomas Merton engaged in correspondence with the British novelist Evelyn Waugh. This slim volume, subtitled A Monk, a Crusty Old Man, and The Seven Storey Mountain, was a gift from my partner/husband Sam on the occasion of the fifteenth anniversary of our relationship, which coincidentally was our wedding day. I finished reading the book exactly three months later, not that it took that long to read the 155 pages but because I read it in digestible bits, allowing ample time to ponder this remarkable period of correspondence between these two interesting men whose lives were perhaps even more intriguing than their writing.

The correspondence between Merton and Waugh began when Waugh was asked by Merton’s American publisher to edit the

Evelyn Waugh

monk’s The Seven Storey Mountain manuscript for a British edition. Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966) was approaching middle age in 1948 and had recently become known in the United States following the publication some two years earlier of Brideshead Revisited, his novel of elicit love and divine grace. The manuscript of The Seven Storey Mountain, written by a Trappist monk living in obscurity in a rural Kentucky monastery, arrived unsolicited, sent by Merton’s editor Robert Giroux at Harcourt Brace, the New York publishing company.

Thomas Merton (1915-1968) was not a novice writer at the time, although he was still somewhat new to monastic life, having been accepted at the Abbey of Gethsemani near Bardstown, Kentucky, as a novice monk in the spring of 1942. Early on it was recognized that Merton’s strength lay in his abilities as a writer, and he was set to work producing texts of various sorts as a means of bringing income to the monastery. The Seven Storey Mountain, written when Merton was in his early thirties, is autobiographical and unarguably his best-known book. The title refers to the mountain of Purgatory in Dante’s Divine Comedy.

Evelyn Waugh was not the only person Giroux approached to edit the work. Three others received unsolicited manuscripts: Graham Greene, Clare Booth Luce, and Bishop Fulton J. Sheen. But it was Waugh, who wasn’t expected to respond, who got the nod. Waugh’s endorsement was selected for the cover of the first edition: “I regard this as a book which may well prove to be of permanent interest in the history of religious experience. No one can afford to neglect this clear account of a complex religious process.” And so it has proven.

Cody has done a masterful job of parsing the two writers’ thoughts and feelings over the course of their exchanges. I suspect most readers will believe, as I do, that in peering into the letters these men exchanged they have been grant privileged access to a moment in time when the lives of these two writers intersected.

Roman Empire Mysteries Delight

Marcus Didius Falco—If you don’t know this first-century detective from a superb series of mystery novels set during the early years of the Roman Empire, then you have missed many hours of delightful reading. Lindsey Davis (born 1949) is the English historical novelist who launched Falco onto the literary scene in 1989 with The Silver Pigs, set during the reign of the Emperor Vespasian (lived 9-79 CE; ruled 69-79 CE).

In The Silver Pigs Falco stumbles upon a conspiracy that involves trading silver ingots, and the investigation takes him to Britain. There he meets a lady above his station, the daughter of the senator who hired him, named Helena Justina. Against all odds, Falco not only solves the case but also falls in love with the noble lady—and she with him. However, they cannot wed until Falco is raised to the upper middle-class rank of equestrian. And that will take some doing. Thus the stage is set for an unfolding romance (and eventual marriage) that provides a continuing narrative through a long and thoroughly engaging series of novels.

Lindsey Davis, by taking this approach, created both a romantic backstory with three-dimensional characters whom readers become well acquainted with over a number of years and a problem. What happens to your main character (and those around him) as he ages? Moreover, what do you do when he retires? Davis deftly handles the issues of aging as Falco grows in his profession and the relationship between Falco and Helena Justina matures into a longterm marriage, complete with the introduction of children into the family dynamic.

I fretted that Davis might decide to retire with her detective, but in fact she took a more interesting and adventurous turn by focusing on Falco and Helena Justina’s adopted daughter, Flavia Albia. This daughter picks up where her father, now comfortably living in retirement, left off, becoming herself an “informer,” the role of first-century private detective. The first of the Flavia Albia novels is The Ides of April, published in 2013. Set in the spring of 89 CE, Flavia Albia even moves into Falco’s old, seedy apartment in Fountain Court, a rundown tenement that Falco now owns. As the story opens, she is a 28-year-old widow.

Davis adeptly negotiates the potential pitfalls of creating a believable female detective working subtly within the constraints of male-dominated Roman society. I recently finished reading Deadly Election, published this year, 2015, and could not be better satisfied with the continuation of this fascinating series through Falco’s daughter. I recommend this series, particularly to readers who love a good mystery and are interested in Roman history, for Davis’s intricately plotted stories also provide a convincing window into everyday life in Ancient Rome.

Guns

“Bang, bang. You’re dead,” we yelled,

Whooping and hollering, scampering

Among the trees, like cowboys on TV.

Shot dead we rolled in fallen leaves,

Arms and legs flopping, then bounced

Up to chase and shoot again and again

Till nightfall came, streetlights blinked,

And our mothers called us home.

Half a century now passed and kids

No longer play cowboys in the woods.

Dead children no longer rise up again

In classrooms, churches, and theaters,

Where real bullets fly all too often

And innocent blood stains the floor.

Toys no longer, guns are the death

Of culture, the demise of civility,

As love of power and of hate trump

Sense, and love of money, money

Negates our duty to the living

And the dead, and the dead to be.

There will be more death. We know.

We could change this future if—

If we had the will to stop pretending

Guns spell freedom with lethal rounds.

Guns write in death, and these cowboys

Cannot bounce up to yell “Bang, bang”

And hear their mothers call them in.

Guns send them home alone, forever.

I wrote this poem in response to the latest mass shooting, which occurred in Oregon. In the previous post I discussed our American obsession with guns and the gun violence that comes from our collective inability to address resulting death and injury not as a threat to a supposed constitutional right but as a threat to the common good that is foundational in our democracy. Sensible gun laws, which are not universal in the United States but could, and should, be, are merely an essential starting point. However, such laws would lay a foundation for changing our pervasive gun culture and making our nation safer for all.

Gun Violence as Entertainment

The United States will not take action to curb gun violence until such violence ceases to be viewed as entertainment.

No one with any sense believes the government is out to take away guns from ordinary people, the folks who hunt, enjoy target shooting, and so on. Nor would even the most cursory reading of the Constitution lead anyone of good sense to believe that effective gun control somehow violates the Second Amendment. These are anti-gun-law arguments promulgated by the self-serving NRA and radical rightists bent on deluding the public for political gain. None of this blather would make any difference if the American public were sufficiently enraged by gun violence to take action. The sad fact is that the American public is not enraged by gun violence; it is entertained.

The term ammosexual should be a clue. Ammosexuals are those with an affection for firearms, those who see guns as sexy, those who wear guns a fashion accessories. But for every ammosexual there are ten or a hundred individuals who view, whether consciously or subconsciously, gun violence as entertainment.

Murder and mayhem as entertainment have a long history. Romans flocked to the coliseum to see prisoners torn apart by wild animals. Public executions across the centuries have drawn crowds in many nations eager to see people hanged, shot, beheaded, or worse. The lynching of black people was a popular U.S. pastime, particularly between 1880 and 1920, when nearly 3,500 African Americans were killed by mob violence.

The postmodern era has moved spectacle violence to the evening news, where it nightly entertains the population in reports mainly of gun violence. Mass shootings this year in the United States have become a near daily experience.

Digitized gun violence—television reports, newspaper stories, government statistics, and other sources of information, usually accessed by digital means—dampens the revulsion factor. Viewers are distanced from actual events. The violence becomes fictionalized, just another shoot ’em up at the OK Corral.

Twenty-seven killed in a Connecticut elementary school. Thirteen shot in a New York immigrant community center. Twelve killed in the Washington Navy Yard. Twelve killed in a Colorado movie theater. Nine killed in a South Carolina church. It’s all schadenfreude for the masses, rubbing their hands and tsk-tsking in front of screens.

Gun violence is real. When one’s children or parents or siblings or friends are injured or killed in gun violence, it is all too real. It’s not entertainment. It’s murder. When we finally come to our senses as a nation, no objections, no fake excuses, no hyperbole will be allowed to stand in the way of sensible gun laws.

But we’re not there yet. In the meantime, we will continue to allow the slaughter of the innocents—for the fun of it.

The Dalai Lama and the Future of Tibet

As Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, celebrates his eightieth birthday this week, there is again speculation in the world’s press about the future of Tibet—and, more precisely, the future of the Tibetan government in exile. A portion of that speculation naturally concerns the future of the role itself. Will there be a 15th Dalai Lama?

As one commentator noted, when the Chinese government, which claims Tibet as its own and opposes the Dalai Lama, ramps up its opposition to the current Dalai Lama, his influence only grows stronger. Indeed, his holiness is the central, encompassing presence of Tibet in exile.

Tibetan history has always been fraught, no less so over the course of the 20th century and extending into the 21st. Thubten Gyatso, the 13th Dalai Lama, was born in 1876 and suffered exile various times before issuing a declaration of independence in 1912. No other state recognized Tibetan independence, however. Consequently the status of Tibet was still in flux when he died in 1933.

The current Dalai Lama was formally enthroned in November 1950 at the age of fifteen. Tibet at the time was engaged in a prolonged struggle with the People’s Republic of China, which then forced on Tibet an “agreement” for “liberation,” by which Tibet became essentially a Chinese province. Subsequently, in the wake of a revolt in Tibet, the Dalai Lama fled to India where he formed a government in exile that continues today.

Some years ago I wrote a brief history of Tibetan governance titled “Patrimonialist Rulership in Tibet: Four Historical Periods,” which appears in a collection edited by William H. Swatos, Jr., Time, Place, and Circumstance: Neo-Weberian Studies in Comparative Religious History, published by Greenwood Press in 1990.

I find it interesting to note that a number of today’s commentators are saying much the same thing that I posited some twenty-five years ago:

The Chinese may well choose to preserve (in appearance at least) Tibet’s traditional political-religious system by doing what the Tibetans themselves did in their dealings with the Mongols in the late sixteenth century. That is, when the exiled Dalai Lama dies, the Chinese may arrange for the discovery of his reincarnation among those more favorable to their rule.

Meanwhile, the current Dalai Lama continues to work for an autonomous Tibet and to foster peace. Tenzin Gyatso received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989, a recognition that has been upheld by his continuing efforts on the world stage. Some years ago, when he visited Indiana University, where his brother was a professor for many years, I was able to attend a lecture he gave. My enduring impression is of a man devoted to peace.

Remembering Bobby Short

One of my favorite channels on Pandora is “Bobby Short,” which also segues to the likes of Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, and others singers drawing from the “Great American Songbook.” But it’s Bobby Short whose voice and jazz piano stylings I listen for.

Robert Waltrip “Bobby” Short, born September 15, 1924, died in 2005 at age 80. Self-taught, Short played the vaudeville circuit in the Midwest before he was a teenager. By age 12 he was headlining in Manhattan nightclubs and playing regular engagements at the Apollo Theater in Harlem.

In various clubs during the 1940s he made his name as a cabaret singer and pianist and that, more than anything else, was his claim to fame. In 1968 he took a two-week gig at New York City’s Café Carlyle and remained a featured performer there until near the end of his life. He was in his element performing music by Cole Porter, Noel Coward, Jerome Kern, Harold Arlen, and the Gershwins. In 2000 the Library of Congress named him a Living Legend.

Short embodied smooth sophistication. His suave musical performances were matched by his elegant, impeccable wardrobe. His voice had a characteristic warble reminiscent of the heartfelt tremble of Sidney Bechet’s soprano sax. He played the White House for Presidents Nixon, Carter, Reagan, and Clinton.

I never had the pleasure of seeing Bobby Short perform. But to hear him is to fall in love with the “Great American Songbook” all over again. Check out “Live from the Café Carlyle” on YouTube at https://youtu.be/PzWrXDzjA7Y.