Interview with Roger Lipsey,

Interview Summary

This interview conducted with Roger Lipsey took place in 2013 when Lipsey was in Louisville using the archives at Bellarmine University researching his book on Merton and his abbot, James Fox. Biographer, art historian, editor, and translator, Lipsey’s career as a scholar and author recalls in part the pattern in Kierkegaard’s Either/Or: a slow movement from aesthetics to ethics to religion and spirituality, and from there to the exploration of community. He is a recognized expert on Thomas Merton. His groundbreaking book, Angelic Mistakes: The Art of Thomas Merton (Shambhala Publications, 2006), received an award from the International Thomas Merton Society as the best book on Merton in that two-year period. Roger’s more recent book on Merton, Make Peace Before the Sun Goes Down (Shambhala Publications, 2015), extremely well received, has led to opportunities to lecture to the monastic community at Merton’s own abbey, Gethsemani, and at a monastic conference in northern California.

Interview Keyword

International Thomas Merton Society Author Angelic Mistakes: The Art of Thomas Merton

Interview LC Subject

Louisville (Ky.) Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani (Trappist, Ky.) Merton, Thomas, 1915-1968. Merton, Thomas, 1915-1968--Religion.

Interview Rights

All rights to the interviews, including but not restricted to legal title, copyrights and literary property rights, have been transferred to the University of Kentucky Libraries.

Interview Usage

Interviews may only be reproduced with permission from Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History, University of Kentucky Libraries.