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Signed book: Original Child Bomb: Points for Meditation to be Scratched on the Walls of a Cave. Limited first edition, one of 500 copies signed by the author. NY: New Directions, 1961. Clothbound hardcover with white paper labels and original acetate jacket, 9 x 9.25, 14 pages. Signed on the colophon in blue ballpoint by Thomas Merton. Autographic condition: fine. Book condition: VG/G+, with a chip and tape-repaired crack to the acetate jacket.
Merton’s Original Child Bomb is a short, poetic critique of nuclear weapons from the early 1960s, representing his later turn from purely contemplative writing toward outspoken social and peace activism. It portrays the atomic bomb as humanity’s own dangerous ‘child,’ a product of scientific progress that has escaped moral control and reflects a deeper spiritual crisis. The title draws on the Japanese term genshi bakudan (atomic bomb), whose characters can be rendered as ‘original’ and ‘child,’ a translation popularized by John Hersey’s Hiroshima; while this phrasing was likely never used by native Japanese speakers, Merton adopts it symbolically to emphasize the bomb as an unprecedented and unsettling creation of human hands.
From the personal collection of a lifelong collector, teacher, and traveler with a passion for world history. His collecting years ranged from the 1970s to the present day, meaning that several of the premier pieces have not been on the market in decades.
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