The third volume of Merton's journals chronicles his struggle of reconcile his new celebrity with his desire for a life of silence and contemplation.

Already a bestselling author and celebrity, the Merton of this volume writes candidly of his yearning for silence and contemplation, of conflicts with monastic routine, and his exploration of Zen, existentialism, Marxism, and Latin American Culture.

Merton's private writing combines a poet's eye for the beauty of nature - in the woods and fields of the Abbey - as well as a fiction writer's instinct for the idiosyncracies of his brethren, the rhythms and tediums of regular observance, the strengths of the monastery and its weaknesses.

Here in their original form are the reflections and observations that lie at the heart of his classic works such as Thoughts in Solitude (1958), Wisdom of the Desert (1960), and Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (1966).