Robert Lax

Robert Lax was a poet and lifelong friend of Thomas Merton, and his influence was especially visible when he urged Merton to aim beyond being a good Catholic and to want to become a saint. The surviving account presents Lax chiefly through this friendship: as a companion in literary experiments and as a friend whose direct challenge helped Merton reconsider the direction of his life.

Identity and Friendship

Lax was a poet whom Merton met during his years at Columbia University. Their friendship endured throughout Merton’s life, and the book identifies Lax as an important influence. The account places him among a circle of friends and teachers who helped shape Merton’s religious and intellectual development, though it gives little biographical detail about Lax beyond his work as a poet and his connection with Merton.

The Challenge to Aspire

In the spring of 1939, Lax and Merton were walking down Sixth Avenue in New York when Lax asked, “What do you want to be anyway?” Merton answered, “I guess what I want is to be a good Catholic.” Lax replied, “You should want to be a saint.” The exchange turned on a distinction between a respectable religious identity and an aspiration to holiness. Merton, conscious of the life he had been leading, thought the suggestion foolish. Lax nevertheless told him that God would make him a saint if he would let God do it. The account presents the conversation as a pointed intervention: Lax did not describe sainthood as an achievement Merton could secure by will alone, but as something dependent on his openness to God.

Shared Work and Merton’s Turning Point

That summer, Lax, Merton, and Edward Rice stayed at a friend’s cottage in Olean, New York, where they tried to write novels. Merton sent his manuscript to publishers, but it was rejected. The episode places Lax within Merton’s literary companionship, at a time when writing and friendship remained part of a life that also included movies, beer, jazz, and dancing. After a long evening at a nightclub, Merton woke with a hangover and felt disgusted with himself; he was beginning to consider becoming a priest. Lax’s earlier appeal to sainthood thus belongs to a period in which Merton’s artistic ambitions and religious questioning were unfolding together, although the account does not attribute Merton’s later decision to Lax alone.

Narrative Significance

Lax’s importance in the account rests less on a narrated personal arc of his own than on the clarity of his intervention in Merton’s. The brief exchange on Sixth Avenue gives their friendship a memorable shape: Merton names a limited ambition, and Lax answers with a more demanding one, then frames its realization as dependent on divine action. Alongside their attempt to write novels, the conversation shows Lax as both a creative companion and a religious influence. The book identifies him as a lifelong friend, making the scene not an isolated encounter but an early expression of a durable relationship.