JUPITER BOUND:
A Used Book Review
By David Robinson
Disputed
Questions, by Thomas Merton
(Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, New York, 1960)
1960 price, $3.95; First Edition used price in
1995, $30.
You can keep your glossy-covered, best
selling, how-to paperbacks. The best of them
are wild flowers. The worst are weeds. Most
are out of print before the ink is dry. Of the
thousands of books published each year, how
many will still be read in fifty years?
I've begun to buy "classic" hard back
books for my kids. I want them to have
friends with strong spines. I look for books
that have outlasted their first printing. I
look for books with roots, writing that smells
of old growth, something that's been
through a war or two.
"Hey, I've got something you might find
interesting; just got it in." I was speaking
with the owner of a used book store on the
Oregon Coast. Knowing I'm a Merton reader,
he brought out a 1960 first edition copy of
Merton's Disputed Questions. Good binding,
dust jacket still on, in good condition, pages
slightly aged, smelling of good earth and
w isdom .
Like walking into a bibliophile's personal
library, I opened to the table of contents of
Disputed Q uestions. Standing before me were
ancient trees, old growth wisdom, great roots
of faith and spirituality. Matthew Fox once
wrote, "All spirituality is about roots. All
spirituality is about living a non-superficial
and therefore a deep, rooted, or radical (from
'radix' = root) life."
Merton's collection of essays meander
among ancient forest paths, seeking
relationships between the spiritual and the
social realms of our existance. He transports
his reader to Mount Athos in northern
Greece, the site of one of the oldest monastic
communities in the world. We climb with St.
John of the Ladder into the rare air of the
spirituality of Mount Sinai. We run into St.
John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Avila, and St.
Bernard, the 12th century monastic
re fo rm e r.
Merton is at his best in his essays which
wrestle with living a life of rooted faith in
our modern violent world. Great trees have
good roots, and endure the tempest. Boris
Pasternak, author of
Dr, Zhivago, is such a well rooted author and
man of faith.
Merton, having corresponded
with Pasternak in 1958-59, devotes his
longest essay to this fellow writer.
"Pasternak stands first of all for the great
spiritual values that are under attack in our
materialistic world. . . He stands for the
freedom and nobility of the individual
person, for man the image of God. . . He
stands for courageous, independent loyalty
to his own conscience, and for the refusal to
compromise with slogans and
rationalizations imposed by compulsion."
As the prophet Jeremiah once declared:
"Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the
ancient paths, ask where the good way is,
and walk in it, and you will find rest for your
souls." In Disputed Questions, as in his
several dozen other books, Thomas Merton
stands at the crossroads of faith and modern
society, and points to the ancient paths
where we too may find rest for our souls.
The Third,6ye
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As many of our regular readers have figured
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Edge (with the help of ads and
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poverty stricken writers and artists have
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running comentary about the store, so
perhaps we could sell enough this summer to
get through the winter. So, we have some
very good books at great prices, and are
willing to work with you, economically
speaking.
Recently we obtained the fabulous G. Rock
collection of poetry, unusual cook books, and
eastern literature, plus a healthy selection of
books by the exploding group of women
writers writing about women’s issues. A
bunch of Louis L'amour paperbacks are just
in. Our selection of rare books and first
editions is expanding, including Frank
Leslie's "The Soldier in our Civil War", a huge
elaborately illustrated 1893 volume. We have
a beautiful 1888 first edition of "Sara Crewe,
or What Happened at Miss Minchin's" (later
to be known as "A Little Princess") by
Frances Hodgson Burnett; if your child
appreciated the recent film this would be a
wonderful start to their literary collection.
Also, in a fit of basic silliness, we have
arranged the children's books by colour. We
always welcome quiet, intelligent, well
mannered children, with clean hands. We,
of course, buy books, so bring them in, we'll
make a deal; recycling works.
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