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I am happy to see your Merton column today…it has given me to impetus to write something I have wanted to write for years…”Whither Merton.” I argue he would have ended up very much like Fr. Matthew Kelty…you may know of him if you visited them years ago…he went through much of the same things as Merton, though not the women or beer…

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Thank you, much appreciated. Honored, too, and to have appeared next to your excellent “Opus” piece. I look forward to “Whither…”.

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There is a story taht Paul Elie tells in his book “The Life you Save May be Your own” about Walker Percy approaching Merton’s hermitage (as you probably know, there is a gravel road connecting the hermitage to the main road running past the monestary, which allowed for sneaking in an out) and coming upon a clearly drunk Merton sitting on the porch..I thihnk he was still slugging from a bottle.

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Thank you. I just found it (p. 395). What an image! By the way, a couple years ago I found the now seemingly-abandoned “Robert Lax cottage” in Olean. Took a couple pictures, but it never occurred to me to look under the porch for bottles.

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