Books: Also Current: Feb. 5, 1965

SEEDS OF DESTRUCTION by Thomas Merton. 328 pages. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $4.95.

Thomas Merton, the compleat bohemian who became a Trappist monk at 26, has carried on an astringent "dialogue with the world" ever since. In his 24 years as a member of Kentucky's Abbey of Gethsemani, he has built a seven-storey mountain of poems, autobiography, reflection and translation that attests to his continuing concern for mankind at large. In this collection of essays and letters, Merton punctures the white liberal's complacent participation in the civil rights movement as a kind of...

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