Robert HUDSON, The Monk's Record Player: Thomas Merton, Bob Dylan, and the Perilous Summer of 1966. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2018, pp. 230. ISBN: 978-0-8028-7520-4. Reviewed by Robert P. MARKO, Aquinas College, Grand Rapids, MI 49506.

In the epigraph to The Monk's Record Player, Robert Hudson quotes Thomas Merton,  La musique est une joie inventee par le silence. In the epilogue,he returns to that quotation on music and silence in the last page further asking, "Why else would a hermit go on a journey into the desert — to live alone, worship God, and pray for the whole world — take a record player along?"  (196). Thus, we have the title.  In addition to world events cited such as the Vietnam conflict, the summer of 1966 was perilous for the protagonists, Trappist monk Fr. Louis and singer Bob Dylan, as both experienced back injuries.  For Merton it became an occasion to fall in love with a student nurse Margie Smith and for Dylan the beginning of self-imposed home exile.

Hudson composes a kind of “parallel biography” which narrates two "soul mates" who never actually met. Both men were eccentric, obsessive public figures seeking solitude and struggling with relationships.  He divides the work into three parts: first their lives until 1965, then March to July of 1966, and finally July 1966 to the year of Merton's death 1968.   The beginning of this odd kinship was 1966 when fellow monk Father Chrysogonus gifted Merton with Highway 61 Revisited.

The author’s focus is clearly on Merton, with Dylan chapters and interludes interspersed.  I was personally grateful for the focus as the Dylan scholar’s listing of records and their context may be very unfamiliar to even those of us who appreciate his music and lyrics.

Incredibly well written and meticulously documented, the work will bring new insights even to those who are familiar with both   The men struggled with maintaining their privacy even though they relished their growing popularity.  For Merton, in fact, solitude rather than Margie Smith was his primary love.  Hudson fortunately does not spiritualize this love affair of the priest monk "who has a woman."  While not a platonic relationship, nothing suggests any consummation of the relationship.  Merton sees the falling in love as a gift of God but later appears to question that.  Hudson notes his conflict. "Just as he believed that he could only achieve unity with humanity by being alone, so too he realized that he could be true to Margie by remaining true to his vows of celibacy." (150)

The Monk's Record Player: Thomas Merton, Bob Dylan, and the Perilous Summer of 1966 is a lively, moving text.  Many of us will be familiar with Merton's life and workings but the attention given to rather unknown aspects of his life such as the record player, his letter writing to feminist theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether and the ethical bankruptcy of psychiatrist Gregory Zilboorg may be new information.  Hudson confirms that, Merton enjoyed his alcohol. Unlike some other biographies, he does not suggest that Merton was an alcoholic. He quotes Baez on their hermitage meeting with Ira Sandperl as proceeding to drink until they were “pie-eyed … like two old Russian convicts.” (153)

Hudson does not present Merton as a flawless plastic saint for Catholic school children that Fr. Louis  rejected later in the appeal of his 1948 Seven Story Mountain.  In his final year of life, 1968, we have Merton giving conferences to Sister Adorers of the Precious Blood in Alaska as well as to monks in Thailand, where he died.  The same Merton was able during his last year of life to enjoy Jazz in a  Louisville bar and, as Hudson reminds us of a well known meeting:  "found himself in a San Francisco cafe, sipping espresso with Beat poet and publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti and watching many attractive women walk past the window” (186).  Hudson’s judicious use of such earthy images is found throughout in a book I consider to be spiritual reading. What Baez once opined of Sandperl may aptly apply to Merton and even Dylan, which Hudson quotes   “a rascal who longs to be a saint” (152).   Thus, the appeal to many of us.

The Monk's Record Player may be a good choice as part of a reading list for a spirituality course on the undergraduate level, particularly when music is a theme.  It is indispensable for any university library. Themes of mystery, uncertainty, the nature of poetry, and difficulty in the spiritual journey are all present. Organization, endnotes and bibliography including music and film are outstanding.  Minor considerations arise from the author's unfamiliarity with Catholic tradition, such as the nuance of different types of vows; however such misunderstandings are insignificant. This book is also highly recommended for personal enjoyment.