Robert Giroux on Merton’s path to the Seven Story Mountain

Giroux talks about getting Seven Story Mountain into print. In the process he quotes the opening lines, one of the best openings in literature. I wish I could find the rest of the opening paragraph…

“On the last day of January 1915, under the sign of the Water Bearer, in a year of a great war, and down in the shadows of some French mountains on the borders of Spain, I came into the world.”