Like a clarion call to a higher life, Merton in a brief book tells the story of his own journey of faith leading to a monastery in central Kentucky

My most pleasant childhood memories of Christianity come from my childhood association with a Franciscan Monastery. Like many Americans however, my experience growing up Catholic was far from perfect, and I left the Church entirely in my 20s.

In recent years I've been able to forgive some of the missteps made by adults and institutions who cared for me as a child and have become interested in the contemplative and mystic strains of Christendom, largely abandoned by Jesus's followers in the USA.To that end, this book. It's a well written memoir and an interesting read, although dense at points. And its author remains blissfully ignorant of what it means to be a queer, a woman, and a Catholic.

It's been recommended that I read his journals as well as this flagship work of his. Apparently, they expose the crankier, smellier side of life among the Trappists. And explode the myth that it's possible to leave behind dhukka by entering a monastery.

Please note that I did my finish this book.

Like so many others I found the 1st half of this book to be rather dull. Thomas spends much of his story telling us all about his external world which in his defense may have been all he was really aware of at the time. I learned more about his friends in the early chapters than I did about him. My primary interest in reading this book was to learn about his inner struggle culminating in his conversion and finally becoming a trappist monk. Unfortunately very little of this struggle is portrayed in his writing. This book did very little to portray the inner life of Thomas Merton.

A classic memoir, spiritual autobiography about one man's journey into monasticism - a man who would continue to write many classics of Christian and Monastic writing. Quite readable, humble and engaging.

A journey of life while dropping heavy theological bombs along the way. Absolutely loved this!

This laid a great background on Merton, but I think it became famous because of his having introduced Americans to his wild earlier life, but then such topics to the West as meditation, Zen, and other "Eastern" sorts of spirituality. The Church evidently edited it for some of the wilder stuff he did in his drinking and carousing days (his child by woman he never found or made amends with---it was a pre social media time!), and the like, but didn't seem to edit for verboseness and boring details.
Thus, is had some really important reasons for running long, and I found it pretty interesting, but it really did need a good editor and could've been a lot more taut in the writing. I'm reading a later book which is much tauter and wiser; I think his later works should get more attention than this one, but being his first autobiographical book, I see why this was THE ONE that's best known.