“Advertising treats all products with the reverence and the seriousness due to sacraments.”—Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (1966)
It’s difficult to imagine Thomas Merton (1915-1968) occupying the same world as Don Draper, but one of the last books of the cloistered monk appeared in the same tumultuous decade in which the protagonist of the Emmy-winning series Mad Men labored.
Among Merton’s many books was The New Man, and oddly enough he and Draper shared something in common: the need to shed an old persona that caused them acute shame. Yet there the resemblance ends.
While Draper and his co-workers at the Sterling Cooper ad agency strive at all hazards in a profession aimed at encouraging and even exalting desires, Merton worked even harder to sublimate his, in an all-consuming quest to experience the goodness of the Almighty.
It’s difficult to imagine Thomas Merton (1915-1968) occupying the same world as Don Draper, but one of the last books of the cloistered monk appeared in the same tumultuous decade in which the protagonist of the Emmy-winning series Mad Men labored.
Among Merton’s many books was The New Man, and oddly enough he and Draper shared something in common: the need to shed an old persona that caused them acute shame. Yet there the resemblance ends.
While Draper and his co-workers at the Sterling Cooper ad agency strive at all hazards in a profession aimed at encouraging and even exalting desires, Merton worked even harder to sublimate his, in an all-consuming quest to experience the goodness of the Almighty.
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