After graduating in 1938, Lax joined the staff of "The New Yorker", working his way up from assistant poetry editor; he was also poetry editor of "Time" magazine, wrote screenplays in Hollywood, and taught at both the University of North Carolina and Connecticut College for Women. Around 1941 he and Merton volunteered for a couple of weeks at Catherine Doherty's Friendship House in Harlem. Lax converted from Judaism to Catholicism in 1943, five years after Thomas Merton, and Rice was godfather to both men. But Lax desired a simple life, so he wandered, working in circuses in Canada as a clown and expert juggler. It was travelling with the Cristiani Brothers circus in 1949 that enabled him to generate material for his collection "The Circus of the Sun", although that was not published until 1959.