Thomas Merton
and
John Howard Griffin

Men of
Traditional
Family Values

If any novelist tried to use the life of John Howard Griffin as the basis for a plot, he would be laughed out of the editor's office for being a fanciful romancer. Look at it this way. In 1935, John, then only fifteen years old and living in Texas, saw an ad about a boarding school in France. He wrote to the school saying he wanted to be a student. He had no money, he said, but he'd be happy to work for his keep. The headmaster wrote back and said, sure, come on over. But they'd give him a scholarship so he wouldn't have to scrub floors.

His dad, a grocer, and his mom, a piano teacher, were flummoxed. I mean, what's wrong with the local high school in Mansfield? Mansfield, by the way, is a bit south of the Dallas-Fort Worth line although it's a bit closer to Fort Worth.

But finally John's folks agreed. So he heads over to France, enrolls in the school, graduates, and decides to remain in France to study both music and medicine.

That's well and good, But in September, 1939, Hitler invaded Poland, and World War II began. John (now 19) remained in France, and helped Jews escape the Nazis. Then in 1940 and with the Germans moving into France, he learned his name was on the Gestapo death list. Fortunately John managed to get away to England and get back home.

John joined what was then called the Army Air Corps, and he was stationed in the Pacific. There on Nuni, one of the Solomon Islands, he lived with the natives, learning their ways and language. This wasn't just to gain information about the indigenous people. It was also to make sure they would be on the Allied side (which was pretty much a given) and that any information they gleaned about the Japanese would be passed on to John.

As the war progressed, he was transferred to Morotai (in the Moluccas) as a radio operator. The islands were subject to Japanese air raids, and once as he was running for cover, a near missed knocked him out for two days. When he woke up in the hospital he had a severe concussion and failing vision. By the time he was discharged, his vision was an uncorrectable 20/200 - legally blind.

Now age 25, John returned to France to study music at Le Conservatoire Américain au Palais de Fontainebleau. When seeking out primary sources for his research on Gregorian chants, he spent some time at a Dominican monastery. But his eyesight continued to fail, and he returned to Texas in 1947.

For some reason the monastic lifestyle, which at first struck him as austere and spartan, had grown on him. So when he got back home, John sought out a local priest, the Rt. Reverend Monsignor Ernest Langenhorst, and in 1951 he converted to Catholicism.

Unfortunately, John's eyesight now rapidly deteriorated to total blindness. Determined to be self-sufficient, he began raising prize livestock on his parents' farm outside of Mansfield.

Yes, this was the life - up to this point - of John Howard Griffin, and a life that no novelist would dare put to the page. But it wasn't as a member of the French Resistance, a war veteran, or a successful stockman that John gained his fame.

Instead, in 1949 John met the New York drama critic John Mason Brown who had come to Dallas to give a lecture. Thinking that John spoke with a literary flair, the critic suggested John try being a writer. Just get some paper, he said, and write.

John's first effort was the novel, The Devil Rides Outside. His method of writing was pretty much unique. He would record the story onto tape while speaking in French. Then he would transcribe the dictation back with a typewriter into English. A strange way to write a book, perhaps. But remember John couldn't see, and with dictation he could get the prose down before he transferred it to paper. This méthode was also a good way for John to keep up his fluency in French.

The Devil Rides Outside was about a young man living in France during World War II and who had studied both music and medicine. The protagonist was living with his girlfriend, and while studying Gregorian chants, he visited a monastery and underwent a spiritual renaissance. We can see where John got his plot.

The book was published by a small Dallas press, Smiths, Inc., and received decent enough reviews. But because of certain passages it ended up being banned, not in Boston, but in Detroit. The book was not, the town fathers said, suitable for children.

Of course, this probably did more to help the sales than hurt. And more importantly, The Devil Rides Ouside became the subject of a landmark censorship trial where ultimately the Supreme Court ruled in John's favor. No book, the justices said, could be banned simply because of isolated passages.

John tried a stab at another novel, Nuni. The story was also autobiographical and was based on his time in the South Pacific. The book was published by Houghton-Mifflin, which was one of the major US publishing houses. The book sold better than The Devil Rides Outside and received even better reviews.

On the other hand, the book sales did not push John to where he could get by as a full time writer. In fact the royalties for Nuni didn't even cover his advance. But at least the two books had gotten John started on a literary career, and he was commissioned to write, Land of the High Sky, a book about the Staked Plains of Texas.

In 1953 John married one of his mom's former (and best) piano students, Elizabeth Ann "Piedy" Holland. Despite Piedy being fifteen years John's junior, the marriage was by no means unexpected. Piedy's dad, Clyde Holland, was an insurance man who also farmed and raised stock. He had been a good friend to John and had helped mentor the younger man in his ranching endeavors.

As his sight deteriorated, John quickly became aware that people thought of him an Other - that is, someone who was outside of normal society. Years later he wrote how Clyde, also a Catholic convert, had been particularly supportive during his early days of blindness.

Once John and Clyde were walking along Main Street. They passed a group of loungers of the type that commonly graced the storefront sidewalks of Small Town USA.

"Look at that poor blind feller," one of them said. "Jeez, ain't that a pity?"

Clyde paused and turned back to the men.

"Yeah, ain't it terrible?" he said. "And the poor sonuvabitch can't hear either."

John broke out laughing.

Shortly after marrying Piedy, John found himself stricken with malaria (originally picked up in the Pacific). The disease infected his spine, and John was confined to a wheelchair. It was 1956 before he recovered. By then he and Piedy had two children out of a later total of four.

Then for some reason in 1957, John's eyesight returned. The recovery wasn't immediate, but by some accounts his restored vision reached 20/15. John's eyes, though, always remained sensitive to light prompting him to wear dark glasses.

Naturally John's more curmudgeonly neighbors grumped that his blindness was either phony or psychosomatic. But although there was never a definitive explanation for what has been labeled as a miraculous recovery, it is clear that his blindness was caused by his war injury. Explosions produce strong shock waves which can cause injury even if there was no direct hit of the shell, shrapnel, or debris. There have even been cases of people being killed by artillery shells simply by passing close to their heads.

So what likely caused John's blindness was compression of the blood vessels in his head. This could restrict the flow of blood to his eyes and result in progressive blindness. Then the anti-malaria drug he had been taking - which we won't mention given it's hazardous nature - may very well have pushed his blood pressure to elevated levels. This would then have dilated the constricted vessels and increased the blood flow to his eyes, resulting in his recovered eyesight.

With three published books under his belt and now able to see, John was able to pursue writing full-time. He began writing for Sepia, a nationally circulated magazine based in Dallas and which was intended for an African American audience. Although John has been described as a Sepia staff writer, it seems that he worked by assignment and kept freelance flexibility.

The job was not without its difficulties. In 1959 and while researching an article, John had trouble getting survey responses from black readers. He asked one of his co-workers, who was black, what was the problem. She said that for all of John's good intentions none of his contacts really believed John could understand their point of view.

That got John pondering an idea he had been considering for some time. Suppose he was able to change the color of his skin so he would blend in with the black population. Remember, this was Texas which was rigidly - and at times violently - segregated as was the rest of the South (and much of the North, de facto if not de jure). If he made the transformation, might he finally be able to see the viewpoint of America's black citizens?

John floated the idea off the Sepia publisher, George Levitan. George thought it was both crazy and dangerous. But he agreed to put up the money for the project. It wasn't much, only $200 plus the expenses needed to travel back and forth to Dallas. In exchange for Sepia paying the tab, John would give George some articles.

John flew to New Orleans where he found a dermatologist who agreed to help. John would take, Oxsoralen (better known as 9-methoxy-7H-Furo[3,2-g][1]benzopyran-7-one), a drug used to treat vitiligo, a disorder producing patchy loss of skin pigmentation. Simultaneously he would be treated with ultraviolet light. The procedure - involving accelerated dosages and long exposures - darkened John's skin, but not as much as needed. So the final disguise was completed by applying stain.

For the next six weeks John traveled through the South as a black man. He was refused service in restaurants and stores, not allowed to use restrooms, treated with extreme hostility, and even physically threatened. Attempts to find more than menial employment, even for someone with his education, were frustrated (John did not really disguise himself or his background). When he responded to ads for a bookkeeper or typist, he was always rebuffed. One plant foreman simply said "they" were going to do everything they could to drive "you" out of the state.

For those who want fuller details of John's travels, there's his book, Black Like Me. The original publication, though, was as a seven-part series of articles in Sepia which ran from April to October, 1960. Titled "Journey into Shame", at first both the articles and the book had only a lukewarm reception from many of the black readers.

What, they asked, was the point? So John spent six weeks facing what they did every day and for their entire lives. There was nothing there they didn't know. Still, Stokely Carmichael, one of the founders of SNCC (The Student's Non-violent Coordinating Committee), did concede that Black Like Me was an excellent book - for white readers.

John, though, had been trying to show to Sepia's readership that it was possible - and what it took - for a white man to finally understand their point of view. But it was also true that Black Like Me found its most receptive audience among white readers. The book was published by Houghton-Mifflin, and as a Signet paperback the sales skyrocketed to over ten million copies.

Not surprisingly and given the temper of our modern times, you'll find people who claim that John's whole story is a fake. The doubters say there's no way a white man could pass for black just by changing his skin color. And John could not have switched his disguise back and forth as he described.

This is an amazing claim, particularly if you look at the photographs that were taken by photojournalist Don Rutledge to accompany the articles. John's appearance as a black man was completely convincing. And when the photographs were taken, the effects of the drug had largely worn off, and John was simply staining his skin. So yes, folks, Black Like Me is a true story.

Ironically, at first John himself had doubted his disguise could fool black people. He said that he didn't believe his speech patterns or facial features were those of someone with true African ancestry. So he decided that he would have to take the black men and women he met into his confidence.

But it didn't take long for John to learn that there were no "typical" features or speech patterns among the black population. Conversations ranged from casual banter to elegant discussions, and accents were from the rural to cosmopolitan. Pigmentation varied from light to dark, and eye colors ranged from brown to blue to green.

Once the articles were published, John became an instant celebrity. His story was reported in Time Magazine, and he was interviewed by veteran California broadcaster Paul Coates. He also appeared on The Today Show, then hosted by Dave Garroway, and he was interviewed by Mike Wallace, then making the transition from game show host to investigative reporter. John appeared on Studs Terkel's radio program, and broadcast crews from as far away as France came to his home.

Of course, there was a lot of negative backlash, and many people in Mansfield no longer wanted anything to do with him. The local atmosphere soon became distinctly hostile. A dummy painted half black and half white was hanged from a street light on Main Street, and John received threats of death and mutilation. After nearly a year the hostility remained, and he and his family (including his parents) moved to Mexico. They planned to stay more or less indefinitely, but after nine months, political unrest in the area forced him to return to Dallas.

Now for a tidbit that few people know. John was not the first white journalist to pass for black. In 1948 Ray Sprigle, a Pulitzer-Prize winning reporter from Pittsburgh, darkened his skin by - literally - getting a super suntan. He did not travel alone as John did but had a black colleague who helped pave the way. Ray wrote his account up in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and the story was picked up by some other papers. But although his book In the Land of Jim Crow was published by Simon and Schuster in 1949, Ray's story never reached a widespread audience.

Ironically, with the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts in the mid-1960's, some sincere Civil Rights advocates began to declare the battle won. Except for a few pockets of hard-nosed racists, they said, there was no more prejudice in America.

Such an opinion flabbergasted not only John, but many of the other activists. When they dared counter that prejudice was not only still around but may have gotten worse, they found themselves denounced as agitators and subversives who were in cahoots with America's enemies.

Alas, what we can call discrimination denial continues today, and not too long ago a semi-famous radio shock jock went into spittle flinging diatribes when a black caller stated that prejudice and discrimination were still a problem. When the caller then gave specific examples he had encountered, the semi-famous shock jock essentially called the man a liar.

Black Like Me is still in print and has gone through a number of editions including electronic. In later years the book has been more positively reviewed among African American critics who acknowledge that the book drove home the horrors of racism to a widespread public. Even more recently the book has found a new and sympathetic audience among readers of other minorities, particularly those who have found their cultures, ethnicity, and religions targeted for demeaning, ridicule, and even out-and-out threats.

As the turbulent decade of the Sixties came to an end, John began to step back from the limelight. Fewer and fewer stories about him appeared, and in the early 1970's an assistant professor of philosophy at a major Midwestern university told his class that John had died. John, the professor added, had suffered terrible agony and had succumbed to skin cancer caused by the treatments used to darken his skin.

With all due respect to assistant professors of philosophy at major Midwestern universities, John was still very much alive. The only adverse effects he experienced had been tiredness and nausea during the initial treatments.

There were actually a number of reasons why John was taking a lower profile. Certainly by nature he didn't like being a public figure. Once he was interviewed by a major news magazine and then told the editors that he hoped that they would find the interview too boring to use.

On the other hand, what was really taking up John's time was he had begun working on a biography of Thomas Merton.

And who, you may ask, was Thomas Merton?

Permit a slight digression. After the publication of Black Like Me John had begun a series of grueling lecture tours. The regimen was not only tiring but dangerous, and John and those who were with him (including comedian Dick Gregory) had to be constantly on their guard. Civil Rights workers not only had to endure threats and violence, but there were numerous attempts to frame them on trumped-up charges.

You'll also remember that while in France John had found the monkish lifestyle congenial. So as a respite from the strain and hazards of his tours, John would pass a few days at the surprisingly numerous American monasteries. And at the Cistercian Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani - about 50 miles south of Louisville - John met Tom.

By the time the two men met in 1962, Tom had already written 20 books, some published by the prestigious firm of Harcourt-Brace. His autobiography, The Seven Story Mountain had become a best seller, and Tom had developed a following even among non-Catholics.

Tom was born in France in 1915 to a New Zealander father and an American mother. He attended Cambridge University for a year but then transferred to New York's Columbia University where he received both a BA and MA in English. His life, though, had been somewhat profligate, and the story was he had fathered a child.

Then - not what you'd expect - Tom decided to join a monastery. This required a conversion from the Church of England to Catholicism, and in 1941 Tom traveled to Gethsemani where he spoke to the abbot, Dom Frederic Dunne. Convinced of Tom's sincerity, Dom Frederic permitted Tom to proceed through the stages of the initiate to become a member of the order.

Now the Cistercians - often called the Trappists - are among the most rigorous of religious orders. They go to bed around 7:00 or 8:00 p. m. and get up between 2:00 and 3:00 the next morning. They spend most of their time in prayer, study, and work. An evening meal might be bread and butter, soup or beans, a vegetable and fruit along with water or milk to drink. Talking is limited, although today it is not - as the Rabbi said to Perchik - exactly forbidden.

As an aside, there is an apparently true story about an aspiring Trappist who had trouble adjusting to the diet. True, the mealtime portions are not massive, but they are certainly sufficient for good nutrition. When John was staying at the abbey he found that the monk's diet was more sustaining than his personal diet (which was physician prescribed). Still, if a monk felt that he needed additional food - perhaps due to being assigned heavy work - he could ask for more.

The young monk found that each meal had an allocation of three pieces of bread per person. Feeling the need for additional sustenance, he routinely asked for more, requests which were granted. But once he sat down at the table, and the brother who was serving plopped down a whole loaf by the plate.

The gesture was intended partly as a joke, of course, and partly to indicate that the young man's less than monkish diet was being noticed. But the novitiate just looked at the loaf and asked, "What? Only one piece of bread?"

In addition to their assigned duties, each monk was allowed to spend some time each day on personal projects. Tom, who had once taught English at a small New York college, began writing poems. Dom Frederic encouraged him to publish his verse, and Tom began to write other books, including as we said, his best-selling autobiography.

And no, Tom did not pocket his royalties. Like all income earned by the monks - whether it was from selling fruitcakes, cheese, or the fine Trappist beer - the money gleaned from Tom's eventual 60-odd books went to support the monastery.

For those who may find themselves in Tom's literary shoes, it's important to realize that when royalties are to be donated to a worthy cause, the payments should be properly structured and documented so it is clear they were not paid to the authors. Otherwise the money will create chaos with their taxes. C. S. Lewis, famed for his Narnia stories, made considerable cash from his many books, but he gave virtually all of it away. He therefore figured he didn't have to pay taxes on the royalties. Alas, the Chancellor of the Exchequer didn't agree, and Jack never really dug himself out of that hole.

A related but more tragic outcome arose regarding the Belgium Dominican Sister Jeanne-Paule Marie Deckers. In 1963, Sister Jeanne-Paule as "The Singing Nun" or "Soeur Sourire" ("Sister Smile") had released the hit recording "Dominique" which reached the #1 spot in the US throughout December. Although Sister Jeanne-Paule said the money was paid to her convent, the government later hit her with a whopping tax bill. The trouble and unpleasantness this caused contributed to the untimely and self-inflicted deaths of both Jeanne-Paule and her companion.

Tom, too, came to an unexpected end. In the 1960's, both the Civil Rights and antiwar movements saw the rise of the celebrity-activist priest. Tom, although a monk, was also ordained and fit this description pretty well. We won't go into details, but monks might or might not be priests, and priests might or might not be monks.

Tom became an outspoken critic of the Vietnam War, and his activities brought him into contact with religious leaders from Asia (including His Holiness, the Dalai Lama). Then in December 1968 and while attending an inter-faith conference in Thailand, he failed to show up for a meeting. His friends found him on the floor of his hotel room, an electric floor fan across his body. There was a third degree burn the width of a man's hand along his abdomen. Evidently Tom had touched the fan and had been electrocuted.

Although you will find Tom praised at the highest level of the Church (and we mean the highest level), you'll also find there are those who are distinctly ill at ease with parts of his philosophy. Tom had always been a serious student of comparative religions and found much merit in non-Christian faiths. In fact, a Buddhist was at least partly responsible for Tom deciding to become a monk.

But where and how would Tom meet a Buddhist? After all, in the 1930's he was living in New York City.

Yes, but he was attending Columbia University which even then had a multi-ethnic character that would soon lead to the eruption of what is called the Beat Generation. Certainly the environment there was fertile for producing the philosophy (as loose as it was) that Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and their friends were soon to advocate.

As Allen and Jack were to do, Tom had become interested in the school of meditative Buddhism known as Zen. He met a practitioner who said that Tom could study Zen and yet still follow his own Christian traditions. So when Tom ended up at the Abbey of Gethsemani, he did so with the idea that Zen meditation and contemplation were not incompatible with Catholic teachings.

Needless to say, Tom's (possible) blending of religions produced - and still does - some disquiet among those who believe in - yes - Traditional Family Values. In later years Tom's quips like "I think if Catholics had a little more Zen they'd be a lot less ridiculous than they are" raised speculation that Tom had become a secret Buddhist.

Of course, Tom's remark was obviously tongue-in-cheek. But it's still not surprising that a well-known Catholic scholar recently divided the list of Tom's books into one group that are recommended reading and another group that must be read "with caution". Tom's later ideas, he concluded, could be confusing and some are - direct quote - "dangerous".

Whether Tom's books are to be read with caution or not, and whether his ideas are dangerous or not, John found that he and Tom had much in common. Both were Catholic converts with much of their education in Europe, and both had become best selling authors. The two men quickly became good friends.

John had become interested in photography in his years in France and when he and his family moved to Mexico he developed into a skilled professional. This was a day when photography was not the simple point-click-and-upload process it is now. And if you really wanted to be a serious photographer, you had to develop your own film (which wasn't cheap) and learn the various and often complicated darkroom techniques.

Learning of John's ability, Dom James Fox (Dom Frederic had died in 1948) had asked John to take some photographs of Tom to replace the older ones they had previously used for his books and publications. During the sessions, Tom became interested in the art. John gave him some pointers and later helped develop Tom's pictures. Some of Tom's photographs, almost all which are black and white, have been published in a number of volumes.

Almost as soon as Tom died, John was asked to write a biography. To consult Tom's papers and journals, he would make extended visits to Gethsemani, and he stayed in the small hermitage cabin that Tom himself had used as a retreat. Because John was now having some difficulty moving around (he sometimes had to use a wheelchair), the brothers would help him fix his meals and would bring him documents for his research.

John spent considerable time away from Texas, and so Piedy once came down for a visit as did John's two sons (who particularly liked the monks). This caused some consternation since Piedy had to stay at the guest quarters for the women, accommodations where strictly speaking John wasn't allowed to go.

If John was to spend the night with Piedy, there were two hurdles to overcome. First the brothers had to vote on granting a dispensation that a man could spend the night in the women's quarters. Then the manager of the quarters had to give her approval. John jokingly thought about signing an affidavit not to "do anything" and perhaps posting a sign saying "Make Prayer, Not Love". We don't know how the issue was resolved as John never told us.

John soon found that working on biographies could be nearly as hazardous as being a Civil Rights activist. The revelation was quite a shock - literally. While he sitting at his electric typewriter, a lightning strike sent a charge of electricity through the cabin's circuits. The strike bowled John over, and he landed on the floor with the wheelchair on top of him.

Fortunately, the chair - with it's rubber wheels - had kept the electricity from passing through John's body. The plastic keys on the typewriter had also helped serve as insulation.

Now there had been some doubt whether Tom had actually died of electrocution or had suffered a heart attack first. But certain similarities of his own accident with Tom's convinced John that Tom had indeed been electrocuted. Certainly he didn't think that - as has been suggested - that Tom's death was anything except an accident.

Naturally no one was going to let John simply dust himself off and keep writing as if nothing happened. One of the Trappists brothers was an M. D. and gave John a check up. In general John was OK although his mind was confused and his memory patchy for some days. Even months later he found he still had numbness in his hands.

The truth is that since the early 1950's John had never been in great health. And as he worked on Tom's biography, there were increasingly ominous signs. By the mid-1970's, he was suffering from diabetes, respiratory and circulation problems, bone deterioration, and tumors on his feet. In 1976 he suffered a severe heart attack, and eventually he was confined full-time to his wheelchair. By 1979 and suffering more heart attacks, John was completely bedridden.

John began missing his publishing deadlines, and the trustees of the Merton Foundation decided he would not be able to complete the book. So they assigned the job to another writer, and John had to return what had been a quite generous advance. Naturally this wreaked havoc with his finances, and when John died in 1980 at age 60, he was practically broke.

References

The Man Who Changed His Skin, Thomas Fensch, New Century Books, 2011.

The Man in the Mirror: John Howard Griffin and the Story of Black Like Me, Robert Bonazzi, Orbis Books, 1997.

"John Howard Griffin", Elizabeth Griffin-Bonazzi, Texas State Historical Association, June 15, 2010.

"The Man Who Changed His Skin", , Ernest Sharpe, Jr., American Heritage, Volume 40, Issue 1, February, 1989.

Black Like Me, James Howard Griffin, Houghton Mifflin, 1961, 50th Anniversary Edition (Afterword by Robert Bonazzi), Penguin Publishing, 2010.

"Black Like Me: John Griffin", Lecture, Sacramento City College Special Collections, 1964, Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/csscic_000011.

Racial Equality: The Myth and the Reality, John Howard Griffin, Center for Labor and Management, University of Iowa, 1970. The text of the Sacramento City College lecture.

Scattered Shadows: A Memoir of Blindness and Vision, John Howard Griffin, Orbis, 2004.

"John Howard Griffin: Sepia Magazine and 'Black Like Me'", Undercover Reporting, New York University,

"This White Reporter From Pittsburgh Dressed Like a Black Man for 30 Days to Expose Southern Racism", Nina Aron, Timeline, June 7, 2017.

"Black? Like Him", Eugene Robinson, The Daily Dose, February 13, 2016.

"Don Rutledge Reflects on 'Black Like Me' Experience", Tim Palmer , Baptist Press, July 31, 1997.

"Donald Rutledge, Black Star photographer, Dies At 82", Ellen Robertson, Richmond Times-Dispatch, February 22, 2013.

"Did the Author of 'Black Like Me' Die From Skin Cancer Caused by the Treatment He Underwent to Darken His Skin?", David Mikkelson, Snopes, May 21, 2013.

"Rereading: Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin", Sarfraz Manzoor, The Guardian, October 27, 2011.

Available Light: Exile in Mexico, John Howard Howard Griffin, Wings Press, 2008.

"A Newcomer's Guide to the Trappists", trappists.org.

The Seven Mountains of Thomas Merton, Michael Mott, Houghton Mifflin, 1986.

The Seven Story Mountain, Thomas Merton, Harcourt Brace, 1948.

"Hot 100 - 1963 Archive", Billboard.

The Hermitage Journals: A Diary Kept While Working on the Biography of Thomas Merton, John Howard Griffin (Author), Congers Beasley, Jr. (Editor), Andrews and McMeel, 1983.

Follow the Ecstasy: The Hermitage Years of Thomas Merton, John Howard Griffin, Latitudes Press, 1983.

The Thomas Merton Center, Bellarmine University.

"Thomas Merton and Dialogue with Buddhism", John Coleman, America: The Jesuit Review, July 13, 2012.

"Can You Trust Thomas Merton?", Anthony Clark, Catholic Answers, May 1, 2008.

"What to Make of Thomas Merton?", Susan Brinkmann, Women of Grace, February 8, 2016.

"John Howard Griffin", NGram Viewer, Google Books.

"The Magazine That Inspired Rolling Stone", Peter Richardson, Chicago Tribune, November 8, 2017.

The Great Imposter, Robert Crichton, Random House, 1959. For what it's worth, the Abbey of Gethsemani was also the temporary residence of Frederick Demara, "The Great Imposter". Not surprisingly Fred just didn't seem to fit into the monkish lifestyle, and the story of the novice who wanted larger portions at his meals is from this account of Fred's wanderings.