The review is by Gary WILLS, not Willis. It is well worth reading. But, as someone who has read all seven volumes of Merton's Journals, I find this unfair:
In 1965, to keep him [Merton] on the vast grounds of the abbey, the abbot approved a state of virtual secession within the monastery. Merton could live in his own hermitage, distant from the main house, where he asked that other monks not visit him. He said that he wanted more solitude, but he told the truth in his journal, that he wanted “all the liberty and leeway I have in the hermitage.” It gave admiring outsiders easier access to him and let him slip off the grounds to make unmonitored phone calls to them.
Merton was conflicted, no doubt, but his commitment to the eremitic life was genuine.
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