About this title: Merton's classic account of the intense and brilliant young man who becomes restless in his life, and goes on a quest for faith and peace that leads him first to Catholicism and then to a Trappist monastery.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Description: Good. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Good. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: PB, Signet Double Volume/NAL, #D929, 1952. Laminated covers are beginning to peal and curl with edgewear and crease to top front corner. Contents are browned but pretty tight. Fair. read more
Edition: Later Edition Used
Binding: S Paperback
Publisher: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York
Date Published: 1978
ISBN-13:9780156806794ISBN:0156806797
Description: Good. 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall Light creasing and wear to spine and wraps, ink inscription on half-title. read more
Description: Fine. 0156010860 NEVER USED! This book has never been read. There are no highlights, No pen marks, No missing pages. The binding is sturdy. This book may have slight shelf wear. Upgraded shipping on orders over $49.99. Customer Satisfaction Guaranteed! read more
Edition: Reprint Edition
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: New Amer Library Mentor, New York NY
Date Published: 1948
Description: Good. 12mo Mass Market Paperback New American Library Mentor, good reading copy, pages are clean though tanning, binding is firm. read more
"Merton's quest for personal happiness leads him from a life of booze and women to a Trappist monastery. I read this book with an open mind, hoping that some of Merton's findings would translate into my own life. He abandons his secular life in favor of godly devotion, but along the way he trades analytical analysis for superstition, and logic for blind faith. He routinely blames saints and devils for mundane events in his life, and interprets the outcome of any situation to be a sign from God. Rather than convince me of the virtues of religious devotion, his book has left me feeling even more disallusioned and disappointed with organized religion."
"This book came highly recommended but I can't recommend it in turn. Maybe if you skip forward to page 225 or so, when he's baptized and starts dithering about whether to enter a monastery. As someone who's never been at all interested in any sort of life of institutionalized contemplation, that part's pretty interesting. The first half of the book, though, is much too much like talking to an angsty teenager who insists on telling you about how "weird" and "crazy" he is when it's obvious to any casual observer that his real issues come from the fact that he is painfully normal."
"The Seven Storey Mountain is an absorbing story about a young man in search of clarity who turns to a life of religious contemplation. I'm not religious, and I don't have a whole lot of context to bring to this book, but the blurb in my edition about it being a modern sort of St Augustine's Confessions is pretty much about right. Bearing witness to his process of conversion is aesthetically quite beautiful but as much as I wanted to relate on another level (understanding? intuiting?) I found numerous obstacles. One, of course, is his fundamentalism, though at times I managed to find even a window in that. (Most confounding perhaps is that despite coming originally from agnosticism, he seems to make little to no effort to even sample, much less understand, other religions and just dismisses them out-of-hand.) Two, the account of his conversion leaves a lot of gaps and I wish he'd have addressed some of the major philosophical questions a bit instead of just name-dropping the names of classic theologians he was reading (and whom I haven't read) and for his own part focusing almost exclusively on the experiential/emotional aspects of his spiritual journey. I understand that he may have deliberately limited the scope of his book in this regard so as to make it manageable, but I personally was hoping to have some intellectual in addition to abstract-spiritual-aesthetic engagement."
"Hugely disappointing. There were two main things about this book that turned me off:
First, I am irritated by the way that he seems to treat esoteric Catholic doctrines as clear and obvious, thus needing no explanation. For example, he presents Marian intercession as a universal principle that should be self-evident to any person capable of reason, despite the fact that (so far as I can tell) it has very little basis in Scripture and is not even a particularly important part of scholastic philosophy. Maybe this is a small thing, but I repeatedly found that Merton talked about his faith and beliefs in ways that did not make sense to me, and probably would not to anyone who was not already a Catholic. Perhaps this book is meant to, as they say, preach to the converted, but if so then that is a rather disappointingly narrow outlook.
Mostly, though, I had read this book because I hoped to read the words of a man who had found in his being a great affirmation. I wanted to hear him talk about beauty and joy and grace, and perhaps even holiness. Despite this dude's reputation as one of the preeminent religious figures of the 20th century, I found that his path to God seemed to have left him angry, bitter, self-righteous, and occasionally straight up mean. His whole heart seems consumed by a great rejection, and disgust, and ugliness, so that cloistering himself was the only way to escape. Leaving him with peace within four walls and a seething hatred for everything outside of them. And that is not what I am looking for."
We guarantee every item's condition, as described on Alibris. If you are not satisfied that an item is as described, return your purchase for a refund.
rating
