LONGING FOR GOD
Echoing Silence: Thomas Merton on the Vocation of Writing
By Thomas Merton
Editor: Robert Inchausti
New Seeds, 2007. 215 pp. $18.00
by Kathy Perry
Echoing Silence is a recently published collection of Merton’s writings "on writing" compiled and edited by Merton scholar Robert Inchausti. Whenever an editor compiles a collection of another author’s writings, they do so for a particular audience and in the face of a particular concern. This book has the potential to revive the flagging spirits of writers –especially those of us who write about the spirituality of our age. Inchausti’s arrangement of Merton’s writings highlights the constancy of Merton’s vision of the task of the artist in the world. With the current glut of commercialism in art –where artists themselves seem to become marketed products– there can be little doubt that this is a vision that needs reforming today.
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