A Search for Solitude: Pursuing the Monk's True Life, The Journals of Thomas Merton, Volume 3: 1952 - 1960. The pivotal volume of the Journals of Merton, as it records his increasing dissatisfaction with what is going on at the Abbey of Our Lady of Gesthsemani. What he sees is a shallowness in thought and religious life, and he decides he wants out -- badly. In 1959 he tries to get official permission to leave, and finally, on December 17, 1959, he gets his answer: NO!
It's a devastating answer, and one that, to my mind, he never recovers from. In the last eight years of his life, he seems to remove himself more and more from that original vision of religious life that he had when he entered in 1941, which leads to a lack of focus, a sense of something not right, to his life. It's interesting however, that the Merton most people are interested in is from these eight years, where his attention is turned to Eastern religion, civil right and non-violence. Strange how things work out, Merton spent so much time and energy thinking about about getting away from Gethsemani, then files to Asia in 1968 to give conferences, dies there (almost nine years to the day of the rejection of his request to Rome, December 10, 1968), and is now buried at Gethsemani, the one place he so badly wanted to escape.