The Sign of Jonas

De: Thomas Merton

Narrado por: Tom McElroy

Begun five years after he entered the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani, The Sign of Jonas is an extraordinary view of Merton's life in a Trappist monastery, and it serves also as a spiritual log recording the deep meaning and increasing sureness he felt in his vocation: the growth of a mind that finds in its contracted physical world new intellectual and spiritual dimensions.

©1953 the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani; Copyright renewed 1981 by The Trustees of the Merton Legacy Trust (P)2024 Tantor

Fabulous book, unbearable delivery

This is an excellent selection of Merton's Journals from his initial years at the monastery, and is a marvelous read - this is my 3rd pass. The narrator, however, would be nearly unbearable were the text not so edifying. In addition to a harsh, halting and brash tone, the mispronunciations of Ecclesial and Latin terms was just funny at first: half way through it's really frustrating. How can the editors not make any attempt to prepare these readers for their task? "Vi-a-TI-cum"? "AU-gu-stine"? "Pas-CHAL" time (later in the book it's "PASH-cal")? The list goes on and on, and it's both unprofessional and really, really irritating.

UPDATE: Listening in the shower this morning, the reader pronounced "Ki-ree" for "Ky-ri-e" (no I'm not kidding). I'm going to return this to Audible and pull out my hard copy.

Challenge to narrate

This is a wonderful journal of Merton's early years at Gethsemani. There are two major problems with the narration. First, the reader frequently mispronounces Latin terms, for example Te Deum is pronounced as "tay doom." The other problem is that the narrator injects weird emphases of particular words in sentences that give what I consider the wrong interpretation of what Merton intended. So I often have to say to myself as I listen, "What are the actual words that have been read, and how would I interpret them?"

But this is such a valuable and useful text, and I am so happy that it is available. And I thank the narrator for making it so. I just wish he had had more help with pronunciations.