The Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University

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Author QuotedPaul Goodman
Title QuotedGrowing up Absurd
Date (Year/Month/Day)1965/01/17
Imprint[S.l.] : Vintage Books. 1960
QuotationIn the monastery after dinner I played Brother Antoninus' record "The Tongs of Jeopardy" to the novices and some of the juniors. It is remarkably good-meditation on the Kennedy assassination. He was talking about his ideas on this when he was here and I was very struck by them then. They cannot be summed up simply as "Jungian." A remarkable and sensitive poetic insight into the state of the American mind-better than anything else I know (for instance how much deeper say than Paul Goodman's Growing Up Absurd which I have just recently read). More than Jungian, the "Tongs" meditation is deeply Buddhist, and the Cain idea, the drive to fratricide as the great weakness in the American psyche, is most impressive and I think accurate. Illtud Evans is coming to preach the retreat and I will talk to him about it. Am tempted to review it for Blackfriars.
Quotation SourceDancing in the Water of Life: Seeking Peace in the Hermitage. The Journals of Thomas Merton, Volume 5, 1963-1965.; Edited by Robert E. Daggy. / San Francisco : Harper Collins. 1997, p. 192
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