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ISBN 13: 978-1-931816-01-4
144 text, 168 total pages  
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    AUTHOR'S NOTE            INTERVIEW WITH PAUL HOURIHAN

Author's Note

The interpretation taken in The Death of Thomas Merton, A Novel is both heretical and controversial.

It is cast in the form of a confessional novel depicting the last day in the life of Merton, the Trappist monk and acclaimed writer, a hero and role model for great numbers of Catholics in the 1950s and 60s ... and even today. In December 1968 at the age of 53, during a monastic conference in Bangkok, Thailand, he died of electrocution in his hotel room. (The “Preface” provides an explanation of this, as well as the significance of my choice of the literary form of the novel.)

I view Merton as a tragically divided soul for several years prior to his death. On the one hand there was his faltering allegiance to the Roman Church and his still strong, though anxious loyalty to his multitude of followers—on the other, his realization of unfitness for the monastic life. I see him as unable to solve his conflicts within a Christian framework and driven for release—unsuccessfully, and too late—into the world of Oriental mysticism; as a man who should not have become a monk in the first place—victimized by his fame, by uncritical hero‑worship from both laity and clergy, and by his own spiritual inadequacies.

For a month prior to the Bangkok conference he visits India and is emotionally overwhelmed by the experience.

He wishes to renounce the Church, to embrace Oriental religion and throw himself completely into its path, but he cannot and will not—for the sake of so many followers who, as he well knows, would be crushed by such an action. He cannot take that step, cannot remain in India, cannot set up a new and independent movement—yet cannot return as he was, cannot go back and be a Trappist monk any more, cannot be a Catholic again.

He does not know what to do, there is no one he can talk to about his problem, the pressure becomes intolerable. Throughout the book a Voice—the voice of his new emerging self, like a voice heard in dreams—speaks to him as a higher consciousness to guide, enlighten, and warn him. Now again he engages in dialogue in extremis with this subliminal voice that cautions him not to take his own life as a way out—suicide will not be permitted either: for the same reason—namely, the shock and disillusion it would arouse in so many of his readers and admirers.

He feels that he has lived too long, that he can never solve his problems, that his hypocrisy in masquerading as a monk and deep mystical thinker will soon betray him, that if he lives much longer everyone will find him out.

Racked by his conflicts, he suffers a heart seizure in his room; in his convulsion he blindly staggers against a huge electric fan, the current turned on—the wiring faulty. He is electrocuted and falls to the floor with the fan clinging to him.
 

Interview with Paul Hourihan

Interviewer: What prompted you to write this book?

PH: I was interested in Thomas Merton, as were many others. I had read a number of his books, but the more I read about him and his life the clearer it became that his image as a great contemplative was far from the truth. For one thing, the manner of his death did not seem appropriate for a man of God. Anyone could have died in a similar way, as many do. Why did he die the way he did? My book attempts to throw light on this question by taking us back to his last day and using the power of creative imagination, to give us a rendering of what might have taken place.

Interviewer: It seems you've written an anti-Catholic book.

PH: The book is not anti-Catholic. What it does is project a view of genuine religion as a living thing―not dogmatic, not confined to the rules and traditions of an organization.

The Catholic Church presumes to speak to modern man in his spiraling course toward self-destruction, but in any dying culture, such as ours has proven to be on so many counts, the absence of genuine religious orientation is always found as an integral part of a universal decadence. Hence what organized religion―oblivious to its failure to nourish the springs of true religion in the heart of humanity―praises should be dispraised, what it clings to should be abandoned, what it idolizes should be seen as a falseness and emptiness that it is.

Interviewer: Who would find this book interesting?

PH: We think ex-Catholics would, and current Catholics who have stopped going to church, who are disenchanted with Catholicism and want more out of religion than present-day Catholicism provides. But, of course, Protestants and others can benefit as well.

Interviewer: You seem to present Merton as a basically flawed individual. Was that your aim―to be critical of him?

PH: No, the reason for writing the book is to attempt to set the record straight. Because Merton wrote so convincingly about spiritual subjects, it was easy to believe that the man himself―in his character―reflected the wisdom in his writings. I was compelled to rectify this false estimate. Which is not to say that he didn't have any good characteristics. He did, and these are readily indicated in the book. For example, he was a courageous, compassionate man, and a true humanitarian.

Interviewer: In all these years since Merton's death, why are you the only one who has come out with a view of him so different from what clerics or laity alike have put forward?

PH: When Merton was at his peak of popularity, Catholics were so desperate for a role model that on the strength of his writings alone they took him to be the one they were searching for, the man who could enlighten them. They did not see the man as he was so much as the man they wanted him to be. Once the image was cast, it was almost unbreakable. The man became the myth, which Merton himself could not have changed even if he wanted to. Henceforth his followers would interpret everything he did and wrote in the light of the myth. If he had an affair as he did, for example, then it showed that he had the capacity to love and be loved―and so forth. Anything he did whatsoever could thus be justified in terms of the image.

Interviewer: But wasn't Merton well respected and widely admired? Didn't he impress people who met him?

PH: Yes, but he was a man of the world, and it was the world that appreciated him. He was not a man of the Spirit, not a man of God. He was not the contemplative he presented himself to be to teach Catholics, in particular, about mysticism. Through ignorance of what he was doing, he set himself up as a mystical teacher for mankind―a very serious matter, if one, in fact, is not so qualified. In my interpretation his death was essentially the result of this presumption. He recklessly conveyed an erroneous image of what a spiritual man is―and seemed, in so doing, to earn a recklessly haphazard death.

Furthermore, the radical reinterpretation I present of his character may be seen as a reflection of the widespread reevaluation of men in higher places to which we have all become accustomed in the last generation. Presidents, senators, rich men, celebrities, religious leaders, culture heroes, sage figures, have all been subject in our time to the compulsion that now drives men and women everywhere to know the truth about leaders hitherto esteemed for actually being what they seem to be. Merton is not the last who will suffer from our need to know the truth about our way showers and hence about our age itself.  

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