Awards
- Commended for Catholic Press Awards 2016
- Short-listed for Religion Newswriters Association 2016
- Short-listed for Washington State Book Awards 2016
- Winner of ACP Excellence in Publishing Awards in the Biography Category 2016
- Winner of ACP Excellence in Publishing Awards in the Biography Category.
Overview
Excellence in Publishing Award, Association of Catholic Publishers Honorable Mention, Catholic Press Association Book Award Finalist, Washington State Book Award Pure Act tells the story of poet Robert Lax, whose quest to live a true life as both an artist and a spiritual seeker inspired Thomas Merton, Jack Kerouac, William Maxwell and a host of other writers, artists and ordinary people. Known in the U.S. primarily as Merton's best friend and in Europe as a daringly original avant-garde poet, Lax left behind a promising New York writing career to travel with a circus, live among immigrants in post-war Marseilles and settle on a series of remote Greek islands where he learned and recorded the simple wisdom of the local people. Born a Jew, he became a Catholic and found the authentic community he sought in Greek Orthodox fishermen and sponge divers. In his early life, as he alternated working at The New Yorker, writing screenplays in Hollywood and editing a Paris literary journal with studying philosophy, serving the poor in Harlem and living in a sanctuary high in the French Alps, Lax pursued an approach to life he called pure act a way of living in the moment that was both spontaneous and practiced, God-inspired and self-chosen. By devoting himself to simplicity, poverty and prayer, he expanded his capacity for peace, joy and love while producing distinctive poetry of such stark beauty critics called him ""one of America's greatest experimental poets"" and ""one of the new 'saints' of the avant-garde."" Written by a writer who met Lax in Greece when he was a young seeker himself and visited him regularly over fifteen years, Pure Act is an intimate look at an extraordinary but little-known life. Much more than just a biography, it's a tale of adventure, an exploration of friendship, an anthology of wisdom, and a testament to the liberating power of living an uncommon life.
Full Product Details
Author: Michael N. McGregor
Publisher: Fordham University Press
Imprint: Fordham University Press
Dimensions:
Width: 15.20cm
, Height: 2.70cm
, Length: 22.90cm
Weight: 0.771kg
ISBN: 9780823268016
ISBN 10: 0823268012
Pages: 472
Publication Date: 22 September 2015
Audience:
General/trade
,
General
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: In Print
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Reviews
Michael McGregor's Pure Act is an outstanding contribution to Lax studies and greatly enriches our understanding of the poet-sage, giving readers much unpublished and little-known material. --S.T. Georgiou, author of In the Beginning Was Love: Contemplative Words of Robert Lax A thoroughly researched and compassionate look at the remarkable life of Robert Lax. Those who know him only as a close friend of Thomas Merton will be delighted with the person they find in these pages: an influential poet, a voice for peace, a wanderer and seeker after truth. Many sought Lax out at his Patmos home; McGregor has made his wisdom available to all. --Kathleen Norris, best-selling author of The Cloister Walk and Dakota: A Spiritual Geography This grace-filled biography is a book I have for years been hoping someone might write, and now, thanks to Michael McGregor, this has become an answered prayer. With grace and insight McGregor bears witness to the evolution of a great artist who is seamlessly connected to his art. --Jim Forest, author of Loving Our Enemies: Reflections on the Hardest Commandment and Living With Wisdom: a Biography of Thomas Merton Tender, thorough, meticulous, an act of fine and generous and wonderfully sharp-eyed sharp-eared witness. The riveting mystic Robert Lax would have been delighted at the care and reverence with which Michael McGregor celebrates and resurrects and delves an extraordinary American's many-layered life. --Brian Doyle, author of Mink River Pure Act, in its offering of a detailed recounting of [Lax's] life and an acute presentation and analysis of his too-neglected poetry, gives him to us: the gift of a human being unlike any other. --C.K. Williams In clear but evocative prose, McGregor brings a triangular tale vividly to life: one side tells the story of Robert Lax's searching into religion and poetry, a second side reveals his life-long friendship with Trappist monk and acclaimed author Thomas Merton, and the third is a memoir of McGregor's own development as a writer through his visits with Lax on Patmos. Lax's story alone is as strange and gripping as any by Kafka. Read, and you will never forget Robert Lax. --Ian MacNiven, author of Literchoor Is My Beat : A Life of James Laughlin, Publisher of New Directions
Michael McGregor's Pure Act is an outstanding contribution to Lax studies and greatly enriches our understanding of the poet-sage, giving readers much unpublished and little-known material. --S.T. Georgiou, author of In the Beginning Was Love: Contemplative Poems of Robert Lax
Michael McGregor's Pure Act is an outstanding contribution to Lax studies and greatly enriches our understanding of the poet-sage, giving readers much unpublished and little-known material. --S.T. Georgiou, author of In the Beginning Was Love: Contemplative Words of Robert Lax A thoroughly researched and compassionate look at the remarkable life of Robert Lax. Those who know him only as a close friend of Thomas Merton will be delighted with the person they find in these pages: an influential poet, a voice for peace, a wanderer and seeker after truth. Many sought Lax out at his Patmos home; McGregor has made his wisdom available to all. --Kathleen Norris, best-selling author of The Cloister Walk and Dakota: A Spiritual Geography This grace-filled biography is a book I have for years been hoping someone might write, and now, thanks to Michael McGregor, this has become an answered prayer. With grace and insight McGregor bears witness to the evolution of a great artist who is seamlessly connected to his art. --Jim Forest, author of Loving Our Enemies: Reflections on the Hardest Commandment and Living With Wisdom: a Biography of Thomas Merton Tender, thorough, meticulous, an act of fine and generous and wonderfully sharp-eyed sharp-eared witness. The riveting mystic Robert Lax would have been delighted at the care and reverence with which Michael McGregor celebrates and resurrects and delves an extraordinary American's many-layered life. --Brian Doyle, author of Mink River Pure Act, in its offering of a detailed recounting of [Lax's] life and an acute presentation and analysis of his too-neglected poetry, gives him to us: the gift of a human being unlike any other. --C.K. Williams In clear but evocative prose, McGregor brings a triangular tale vividly to life: one side tells the story of Robert Lax's searching into religion and poetry, a second side reveals his life-long friendship with Trappist monk and acclaimed author Thomas Merton, and the third is a memoir of McGregor's own development as a writer through his visits with Lax on Patmos. Lax's story alone is as strange and gripping as any by Kafka. Read, and you will never forget Robert Lax. --Ian MacNiven, author of Literchoor Is My Beat : A Life of James Laughlin, Publisher of New Directions Drawing on his friendship with poet Robert Lax (19152000) and his close readings of Lax's writings, McGregor eloquently offers the definitive biography of a too often forgotten figure who influenced a number of writers and crafted spirituality out of his deep commitment to love, poverty, and justice. --Publishers Weekly Pure Act is much more than a biography. It's a real and full and personal meditation on life, and on what a life is for. --Karen Fisher, author of A Sudden Country Michael McGregor's new biography, iPure Act: The Uncommon Life of Robert Laxr, shines a welcome light on an under-appreciated figure. McGregor's writing is perceptive, intelligent, and quietly lyrical. -iImager
Presenting Lax as an embodiment of the wisdom of simplicity and himself as a naive boy who had washed up on his shores , McGregor becomes both unobtrusive character and reliable narrator in this text, connected to Lax by the author's own need for personal searching. -The Merton Seasonal This is a biography to which I will return for inspiration. -Rev. Ted Huffman McGregor wants to see Lax in his own right, and, true to that aim, he has written an intellectual biography that is as full and fair as one could expect. -Commonweal Magazine McGregor, who discovered Lax after reading Merton's classic book The Seven-Storey Mountain as a young man, subtitles his biography The Uncommon Life of Robert Lax. The poet, who spent most of his life living an austere, quiet life in Greece, latterly on the island of Patmos, regarded his dwelling place as 'like living in a church.' -The Catholic Herald [Pure Act] will help re-awaken your idealism. -Ron Rolheiser, OMI Pure Act is a homage, a love letter, an apologia for a curious poetics, and a well-considered story about an uncommon man and his very uncommon life. For us, it may prove something of a wake-up call as well. -- -Scott Cairns The Christian Century Pure Act is an admiring biography, one that is well-researched and written with affection...While Lax's strange life--McGregor calls it an uncommon life--will not cause readers to emulate it, it will provoke them to ponder what it is to be fully human. This is, of course, one of the principal functions of biography, needed now more than ever. -- -Dana Greene National Catholic Reporter
Author Information
Michael N. McGregor is a Professor of English and Creative Writing at Portland State University. He has lectured at universities, conferences, and community events on both Robert Lax and Thomas Merton and is a member of Biographers International Organization and the International Thomas Merton Society.
