[citation needed] Merrick enrolled in Princeton University in 1936, studied French literature, and was active in campus theater.
He quit in the middle of his junior year and moved to New York City, where he became an actor, landing the role of Richard Stanley in George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart's The Man Who Came to Dinner.
[3] Eager to participate in World War II, Merrick got a job with the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner to the Central Intelligence Agency.
In 1970, 10 years after moving to Hydra, Merrick published his second successful novel and his best-known book, The Lord Won't Mind.
The story's protagonists, Charlie Mills and Peter Martin, both young, handsome, and well-endowed, fall madly in love.
Charlie is terrified of rejection, especially that of his elitist, moralistic grandmother, whom he loves but who expects him to maintain an aristocratic lifestyle.
At first, Charlie attempts to live a double life, expressing his homosexuality through acting and painting, but he feels incomplete without Peter.
The books have been criticized for the primal importance accorded to physical beauty and extremely large penises in the gay male world.
Although Merrick’s novels are often criticized for their focus on handsome, virile men, some critics defend this emphasis as authentic:Beauty is a part of gay life, an important part – those men aren’t spending all those hours at the gym just for the cardiovascular benefits.
[6] Some dismiss Merrick because of his obvious romanticism; others do so because he sprinkles explicit scenes of gay sexual intercourse throughout each novel.But underneath the handsome blonde studs with too much wealth falling in love on the Côte d'Azur, are fairly progressive and even radical conceptualizations of what it means to be gay, the likelihood of self-actualization, identity politics, and the role that power plays in relationships.
[3] In his later works, Merrick rejected socially imposed roles and labels, insisting that each gay person question the assumptions underlying his life.
Deeper probing into Merrick's works will undoubtedly yield richer understandings of the complex social dynamics that construct networks of control over human sexuality.
[3]In 1956, when Merrick was 40, he met Charles Gerard Hulse, who was working in Paris at the time – a 27-year-old American dancer and actor (b.