When prophecy still had a voice

the long version

"Thomas Merton (1915-1968) was a twenty-year-old sophomore when he was introduced to fellow student Robert Lax (1915-2000) in the Columbia University cafeteria in 1935. They were brought together by an admiration for each other's writing as it appeared in the college humor magazine. Upon graduation in 1938, Merton converted to Roman Catholicism and Lax began graduate study in English and took a job at the New Yorker. Three years later, Merton entered the Abbey of Gethsemani, and he and Lax saw each other only four more times. Yet their friendship was sustained for the next thirty-three years through an amazing correspondence." "These letters of two poets and solitaries betray a giddy delight in wordplay, unconstrained by rules of grammar or conventions of spelling. Puns, portmanteaus, and inside jokes abound. The thiry-year exchange began when Merton dashed off a note on June 17, 1938, after spending a week with Lax's family. The final epistle in their correspondence was written by Lax on December 8, 1968. Merton died in Bangkok five days later and never received it." "Arthur Biddle spent nearly ten years collecting every letter known to exist between Merton and Lax, a total of 346, two-thirds of which have never been published. Biddle provides chronologies of their lives and, through unobtrusive notes, places events and people in context within the letters. This volume also includes the text of a rare interview with Lax."--Jacket.