“…Here was a book that achieved the kind of dialogue to which he had aspired ever since reading I and Thou: not reformulated thought, but the “spontaneous elucidation of what we do not yet know” ; not thought about what is already known, but “what will come to be known in our saying it to someone who will reply”. “
from “The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage”, by Paul Elie. Farrar, Straus, Giroux, NY. 2013. page 357.
This is Paul Elie talking about Merton’s reaction to Walker Percy’s novel “The Moviegoer”….but now that we’ve mapped out all the literary references, the money phrase is “what will come to be known in our saying it to someone who will reply”. The remote cause of the insight is Martin Buber, “I and Thou”.
Great description of what happens in what I’m calling, in this blog, Conversation. Capital C.
TimothyOne 