If you’ve ever felt like your life was just a series of noisy distractions leading nowhere, you’re basically in the same headspace Thomas Merton was in the late 1930s. He was a young, brilliant, and arguably chaotic intellectual living in New York City, drifting through jazz clubs and Columbia University classrooms. Then he did something that most people today would find completely insane. He gave it all up. All of it. He walked into a Trappist monastery in Kentucky and decided to stay there forever.
The Seven Storey Mountain is Merton's autobiography, but calling it a "memoir" feels a bit too formal. It’s more like a raw, sometimes frustrating, and deeply honest account of a man who realized that having everything he wanted wasn't making him happy. Published in 1948, the book was an accidental blockbuster. Nobody expected a story about a silent monk to sell millions of copies, yet it did. Even now, in a world where we’re constantly glued to screens and chasing the next dopamine hit, Merton’s struggle feels strangely modern.
The Man Before the Habit
Thomas Merton wasn't born a saint. Honestly, he was kind of a mess. Born in France in 1915 to artist parents, his early life was defined by rootlessness and loss. His mother died when he was young, and his father passed away while Merton was still a teenager. This left him with a lot of freedom and very little direction. He spent his time at Cambridge and later Columbia University drinking, chasing girls, and trying to find a "cause" to believe in, whether it was Communism or literature.
He writes about this period with a lot of self-criticism. He saw himself as someone who was "full of a huge, gaps-in-the-fence kind of emptiness." That’s a feeling a lot of us recognize—that nagging sense that despite being busy, we aren't actually doing anything that matters. The Seven Storey Mountain tracks this psychological shift from a cynical, urban intellectual to a man who literally found God in a library.
Why Does This Book Still Matter?
We live in an age of "optimization." We have apps for sleep, apps for productivity, and apps to help us meditate for five minutes before we go back to being stressed out. Merton represents the extreme opposite of that. He didn't want to optimize his life; he wanted to transform it.
The title itself comes from Dante’s Purgatorio, where the mountain of Purgatory has seven terraces representing the seven deadly sins. Merton’s journey is about climbing that mountain. He deals with the same stuff we do: pride, greed, and a restless mind. But instead of scrolling through TikTok to ignore the existential dread, he went into silence.
✨ Don't miss: Why T. Pepin’s Hospitality Centre Still Dominates the Tampa Event Scene
One of the most fascinating things about The Seven Storey Mountain is how it describes the tension between wanting to be alone and needing to belong. Merton was a writer. He loved words. But the Trappists were a silent order. Imagine the internal conflict of a man whose entire identity was built on being "clever" suddenly having to be quiet. It’s a brutal, beautiful transition.
The New York Years and the "Great Hunger"
Merton’s time in Greenwich Village is probably the most relatable part of the book for anyone who has lived in a big city. He describes the smoke-filled rooms, the endless talk about politics and art, and the feeling that something was fundamentally missing. He describes it as a "great hunger."
He eventually finds his way to the Catholic Church, specifically the Corpus Christi Church near Columbia. It wasn't a sudden bolt of lightning. It was a slow burn. He started reading philosophy—guys like Etienne Gilson—and realized that the intellectual life he was leading was hollow because it didn't have a moral or spiritual center.
- He was baptized in 1938.
- He taught English at St. Bonaventure University.
- He struggled with the idea of becoming a priest versus just being a "good person."
- Finally, in 1941, he entered the Abbey of Gethsemani.
The world was literally on fire when he made this choice. World War II was raging. Merton’s brother, John Paul, actually died in the war shortly after Thomas entered the monastery. The contrast between the global chaos of the 1940s and the structured, rhythmic silence of Gethsemani is one of the most powerful themes in the book.
What Most People Get Wrong About Merton
There's this idea that Merton became a hermit and lived a peaceful, stress-free life of prayer. That’s totally wrong. If you read the later parts of The Seven Storey Mountain and his subsequent journals, you see a man who was constantly wrestling with his superiors, his own ego, and his desire to speak out on social issues.
🔗 Read more: Human DNA Found in Hot Dogs: What Really Happened and Why You Shouldn’t Panic
He wasn't escaping the world because he hated it. He was trying to find a vantage point where he could actually understand it. Later in his life, Merton became a massive figure in the civil rights movement and anti-war protests, corresponding with people like Martin Luther King Jr. and Thich Nhat Hanh. This book is just the beginning of that trajectory. It’s the "origin story" of a man who realized that internal peace is the only way to build external peace.
The Struggle with Silence
Being a Trappist in the 40s was hardcore. We're talking about waking up at 2:00 AM for prayers, manual labor in the fields, and a diet that would make a modern vegan look like a glutton. Merton didn't sugarcoat it. He talk about the cold, the exhaustion, and the sheer difficulty of trying to shut up his own brain.
He had this weird paradox: he went to the monastery to disappear, but by writing his autobiography, he became one of the most famous monks in the world. His abbot actually encouraged him to write, which created a whole new set of problems for him. How do you remain humble when your book is a bestseller? How do you practice "detachment" when you’re worried about your royalties or your reviews?
Is It "Too Religious" for a Modern Reader?
Some people pick up The Seven Storey Mountain and get put off by the 1940s Catholic terminology. Yeah, Merton can be a bit of a zealot in this specific book. He was a new convert, and new converts are always a little intense. He’s often dismissive of his old life and other religions in a way that he actually walked back later in his life.
But if you look past the dogma, the core of the book is about the universal human search for meaning. It’s about the "poverty of spirit." Whether you’re religious or not, there’s something deeply compelling about a person who asks: "What if I stopped running? What if I just sat still?"
💡 You might also like: The Gospel of Matthew: What Most People Get Wrong About the First Book of the New Testament
Impact on Literature and Culture
Merton changed how people thought about monks. Before him, the popular image was either a medieval caricature or a boring, distant figure. Merton was cool. He was a poet. He listened to jazz. He understood the "modern" world but chose something else.
His writing style in the book is incredibly vivid. He doesn't just say he was sad; he describes the "heavy, gray weight of the city" and the "dry taste of intellectual vanity." It reads more like a novel than a dry religious text. That’s probably why it stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for months and why people like Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh were such big fans.
Real-World Takeaways from Merton’s Journey
If you’re looking for a "how-to" guide, this isn't exactly it. It’s a "how-I-did-it" guide. But there are a few things anyone can take away from Merton's experience without actually moving to a monastery in Kentucky.
- Audit Your Noise. Merton realized that his life was full of "chatter"—meaningless conversations, social pressures, and internal ego-trips. Just identifying what is "noise" and what is "signal" in your own life is a huge first step.
- The Value of Solitude. You don't need a cell in an abbey to find a little quiet. Merton argued that without some form of solitude, we just become echoes of what everyone else thinks.
- Honesty over Image. The reason the book works is that Merton is mean to himself. He doesn't pretend he was a misunderstood hero; he admits he was a self-centered jerk. That level of self-awareness is rare and necessary for any kind of growth.
- Embrace the Process. The "Mountain" is seven storeys for a reason. You don't get to the top in a day. It’s a slog.
How to Approach the Book Today
If you decide to read it, don't feel like you have to agree with Merton’s theology to get value from it. Look at it as a psychological profile of a man trying to find his soul in an age of machines.
Start by reading the first section, "Hagia Sophia," and the chapters about his time in New York. If the religious language starts to feel heavy, focus on his descriptions of nature and his internal state. The prose is beautiful enough to carry you through the denser theological bits.
Next Steps for the Interested Reader:
- Visit a "Third Space": Find a place that isn't work and isn't home where you can be quiet for an hour. No phone. No music. Just sit. See how uncomfortable it makes you. That discomfort is what Merton was investigating.
- Compare with his later work: If you find this book too "Catholic," check out New Seeds of Contemplation or his journals from the 1960s. You'll see how his narrow focus in the beginning opened up into a massive, inclusive worldview.
- Journal your own "noise": Spend a day noticing how many of your thoughts are actually yours and how many are just reactions to things you saw online or heard from others.
Thomas Merton eventually died in a freak accident in Bangkok in 1968, touching an electric fan after stepping out of a bath. It was a weird, sudden end for a man who had spent his life preparing for the eternal. But The Seven Storey Mountain remains his most enduring legacy—a map for anyone who feels lost in the modern world and wants to find their way home, wherever that might be.