About this item
The story of a monk, a minstrel, and the music that brought them togetherIn 1965 Thomas Merton fulfilled a twenty-four-year-old dream and went to live as a hermit beyond the walls of his Trappist monastery. Seven months later, after a secret romance with a woman half his age, he was in danger of losing it all. Yet on the very day that his abbot uncovered the affair, Merton found solace in an unlikely place - the songs of Bob Dylan, who, as fate would have it, was experiencing his own personal and creative crises during the summer of 1966.In this parallel biography of two countercultural icons, Robert Hudson plumbs the depths of Dylan's influence on Merton's life and poetry, recounts each man's interactions with the woman who linked them together - Joan Baez - and shows how each transcended his immediate troubles and went on to new heights of spiritual and artistic genius. Readers will discover in this compelling book a story of creativity and crisis, burnout and redemption, in the tumultuous era of 1960s America.
About the Author
In third grade Bob knew that books would be his life - reading them, writing them, and making them. He studied literature and languages, eventually earning a master's degree in comparative literature. He has been a teacher, a book-store clerk, a journal editor, a translator, a book designer, a proofreader, a small-press publisher, a writer, and he has certificates in bookbinding and hand printing. For the past thirty-two years, he has worked as an editor for Zondervan, a division of HarperCollins. He is a member of the West Michigan Thomas Merton Society and serves on the board of the Calvin College Center for Faith and Writing.
He is the author of The Christian Writer's Manual of Style: 4th Edition - a volume that has become a standard reference in Christian publishing. His first volume of poetry, Kiss the Earth When You Pray, was published in 2016. His articles and poetry have appeared in Christianity Today, The Other Side, The Mennonite, The Seneca Review, Mars Hill Review, and other magazines and journals. For four years he blogged for WorkingPOET.com and edited their online newsletter.
Bob and his wife, Shelley, play fiddle and banjo, respectively, in an old-time Southern string band called Gooder'n Grits. They play for barn dances and festivals throughout West Michigan. They also operate the Perkipery Press, a small chapbook publisher. They have three daughters: Abbie, Molly, and Lili.
