Robert Hudson is a recognized Bob Dylan scholar, a member of the International Thomas Merton Society, and a veteran editor who has worked with a number of best-selling authors, including Philip Yancey, Walter Wangerin Jr., Leonard Sweet, and Lee Strobel. He and his wife, Shelley, play in the old-time string band Gooder'n Grits.
Booklist
"There are many books about Merton already, but Robert Hudson,
merging his fascinations with Merton and Dylan, writes so limpidly
that shelf room just must be made for this one." Steve Rabey
-- best-selling author and journalist
"Robert Hudson's revealing 'parallel biography' shows how two of
the most prolific and influential figures in the 1960s, both
perpetually restless spiritual pilgrims, shared a passion for
prophetic poetry, an opposition to the war in Vietnam, and a
boundless inquisitiveness. In this enjoyable and insightful book
Hudson connects dots that other Merton scholars have overlooked."
Rowan Williams
-- former Archbishop of Canterbury
"A warm and vivid picture of two very different but unexpectedly
related countercultural icons in that extraordinary mid-sixties
moment of hope and imaginative enlargement. This book enables us to
see some of the deep currents of that era and to reacquaint
ourselves with two great, unclassifiable figures."John W.
Whitehead
-- author of Battlefield America and A Government of Wolves
"Artfully demonstrates how the minds of two individual cultural
icons merge with a message that all the world needs to hear.
Difficult to put down once you open the first page and begin to
read."
Scott M. Marshall
-- author of Bob Dylan: A Spiritual Life
"A gloriously detailed account of two solitary yet world-famous
artists in a decade that still bears surprising fruit. Hudson's
book takes you on an unexpected journey with Merton and Dylan--an
enlightening, challenging, and refreshing hiatus from the demands
of our digital age." David Dalton
-- from foreword
"You may think, as I at first did, that pairing a Utopian hermit
monk and a demon-haunted rock star is just plain perverse or at the
very least willfully paradoxical. But there you'd be dead wrong. .
. . In the end it's Bob Hudson's love for Thomas Merton and Bob
Dylan that's the alchemical fire that makes [this book] work. As
curious as this cockamamie pairing is, The Monk's Record Player is
a meditation on inspiration, contact highs, and the unknowable
workings of the cosmos." Publishers Weekly
"Hudson weaves a fun tale of cross-cultural influence in this
exploration of Bob Dylan's influence on Thomas Merton." Christian
Market
"Hudson informs and enthralls readers. . . . This book is a
profound meditation of apparent contradictions. Any adult
interested in U.S. history and culture, religion, philosophy, art,
literature, or music will enjoy this well-written and very readable
book." Library Journal
"Fascinating. . . . While Nobel Prize winner Dylan has always
maintained a distinct celebrity, Merton's renown has dimmed
somewhat, and it's nice to see this crusader for world peace
introduced to a new generation of readers in such an intriguing
way." America
"Entertaining. . . . One does get the sense that Dylan would have
liked Merton as much as the monk admired and emulated him."
Commonweal
"The unlikely pairing of Dylan and Merton is the charm of the book.
. . . Delightfully difficult to classify. Neither scholarly
disquisition nor celebrity bio, it is rather history in the form of
a fable: not dark but rather light comedy. It is light that
illumines, finally, a direction home: through solemn vows, a
solidarity born of forgiveness, and at least a touch of
rock-and-roll." Catholic News Service
"Runs circles around any mere biographical treatment of either
Father Merton or Dylan. . . . This book teaches lessons in
spirituality the reader may not expect but from which he or she
will benefit deeply."
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