Merton`s manuscripts valued $1 million

MERTON WORK'S DISCOVERED - COURIER JOURNAL REPORT

Bellarmine University receives major gift for Merton Center

Bellarmine University President Joseph J. McGowan announced today the receipt of a gift of draft manuscripts and correspondence valued at nearly $1 million to the university’s Thomas Merton Studies Center.

Robert Giroux, a partner in the publishing firm of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, has given a variety of Thomas Merton original pieces to the university. The collection, which has been appraised at $911,225 includes:
- a complete first draft of The Ascent to Truth, along with a number of
variants.
- a draft of Disputed Questions.
- a draft of Thoughts in Solitude.
- a typed manuscript of The Waters of Siloe with extensive editorial
corrections.
- more than 35 original pieces of correspondence from Merton to Giroux,
dating back as far as 1949, along with a similar number of carbon copies
of Giroux’s letters to Merton.
- plus many more important but less significant pieces.

"We are extremely appreciative of Mr. Giroux’s thoughtfulness and gift," said Bellarmine President Joseph J. McGowan. "We are honored to welcome this new material to what we think is the world’s pre-eminent Thomas Merton collection."

Giroux was a schoolmate of Merton’s at Columbia, and he edited and published a number of his books including Disputed Questions and Thoughts in Solitude. Giroux gave Bellarmine’s commencement address at the December 2003 ceremony, at which time he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Bellarmine.

MERTON'S PAPERS DONATED TO BELLARMINE UNIVERSITY

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) - The renowned book editor and publisher who edited many of Thomas Merton's works donated nearly $1 million worth of the late poet's papers to the Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University.

Robert Giroux said he was sorting through his New Jersey apartment last year when he discovered more than 3,000 pages of documents from the Roman Catholic monk and poet who died in 1968.

"I just knew that's Merton's stuff and forgot what it was," said Giroux, a college friend of Merton's from Columbia University who edited many of his books.

Now 91, Giroux was a partner at publishing house Farrar, Straus &Giroux. He edited works by T.S. Eliot, Bernard Malamud, Flannery O'Connor and many others. The Merton center collection has 50,000 documents by and about Merton, who lived at the Abbey of Gethsemani near Louisville from 1941 until his death at age 53.


The documents donated by Giroux include drafts or proofs of five books, an unpublished book manuscript, letters between Merton and Giroux, and a 1940 rejection slip for an early novel.Paul Pearson, director of the Merton center, said that the four heavily edited drafts for "The Ascent to Truth," a book on the philosophy of
Christian mysticism, could provide material for a doctoral dissertation."A researcher could see how that book developed," Pearson said.

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