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The life you save may be your own : an American pilgrimage : Flannery O'Connor, Thomas Merton, Walker Percy, Dorothy Day

In the mid-twentieth century four American Catholics came to believe that the best way to explore the questions of religious faith was to write about them, in works that readers of all kinds could admire. This book is their story, a vivid and enthralling account of great writers and their power over us. Thomas Merton was a Trappist monk in Kentucky; Dorothy Day the founder of the Catholic Worker in New York; Flannery O'Connor a "Christ-haunted" literary prodigy in Georgia; Walker Percy a doctor in New Orleans who quit medicine to write fiction and philosophy. A friend came up with a name for them--the School of the Holy Ghost--and for three decades they exchanged letters, read one another's books, and grappled with what one of them called a "predicament shared in common." In this book Paul Elie tells these writers' story as a pilgrimage from the God-obsessed literary past of Dante and Dostoevsky out into the thrilling chaos of postwar American life. It is a story of how the Catholic faith, in their vision of things, took on forms the faithful could not have anticipated. And it is a story about the ways we look to great books and writers to help us make sense of our experience, about the power of literature to change--to save--our lives.

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  • "In the mid-twentieth century four American Catholics came to believe that the best way to explore the questions of religious faith was to write about them, in works that readers of all kinds could admire. This book is their story, a vivid and enthralling account of great writers and their power over us. Thomas Merton was a Trappist monk in Kentucky; Dorothy Day the founder of the Catholic Worker in New York; Flannery O'Connor a "Christ-haunted" literary prodigy in Georgia; Walker Percy a doctor in New Orleans who quit medicine to write fiction and philosophy. A friend came up with a name for them--the School of the Holy Ghost--and for three decades they exchanged letters, read one another's books, and grappled with what one of them called a "predicament shared in common." In this book Paul Elie tells these writers' story as a pilgrimage from the God-obsessed literary past of Dante and Dostoevsky out into the thrilling chaos of postwar American life. It is a story of how the Catholic faith, in their vision of things, took on forms the faithful could not have anticipated. And it is a story about the ways we look to great books and writers to help us make sense of our experience, about the power of literature to change--to save--our lives."@en
  • "In the mid-twentieth century four American Catholics came to believe that the best way to explore the questions of religious faith was to write about them, in works that readers of all kinds could admire. This book is their story, a vivid and enthralling account of great writers and their power over us. Thomas Merton was a Trappist monk in Kentucky; Dorothy Day the founder of the Catholic Worker in New York; Flannery O'Connor a "Christ-haunted" literary prodigy in Georgia; Walker Percy a doctor in New Orleans who quit medicine to write fiction and philosophy. A friend came up with a name for them--the School of the Holy Ghost--and for three decades they exchanged letters, read one another's books, and grappled with what one of them called a "predicament shared in common." In this book Paul Elie tells these writers' story as a pilgrimage from the God-obsessed literary past of Dante and Dostoevsky out into the thrilling chaos of postwar American life. It is a story of how the Catholic faith, in their vision of things, took on forms the faithful could not have anticipated. And it is a story about the ways we look to great books and writers to help us make sense of our experience, about the power of literature to change--to save--our lives."
  • "This volume chronicles the influences, writing struggles and religious imagination at work in four American writers -- Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy, Thomas Merton and Dorothy Day. All of them were Catholic, and all of them flourished over the roughly 30- or 40-year period from the 1930's through the 60's that is sometimes called ''the Catholic moment'' in America. Merton was a Trappist monk in Kentucky; Day was the founder of the Catholic Worker in New York; O'Connor was a "Christ-haunted" literary prodigy in Georgia; Percy was a doctor in New Orleans who quit medicine to write fiction and philosophy. The author draws comparisons between their backgrounds, temperaments, circumstances and words, he reveals "four like-minded writers" whose work took the shape of a movement. Though they produced no manifesto they were unified as pilgrims moving toward the same destination while taking different paths."

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  • "History"@en
  • "History"
  • "Electronic books"@en
  • "Biography"@en
  • "Biography"
  • "Criticism, interpretation, etc"
  • "Criticism, interpretation, etc"@en

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  • "The life you save may be your own : an American pilgrimage : Flannery O'Connor, Thomas Merton, Walker Percy, Dorothy Day"@en
  • "The life you save may be your own : an American pilgrimage"
  • "The life you save may be your own : an American pilgrimage"@en
  • "The life you save may be your own"
  • "The life you save may be your own"@en
  • "The life you save may be your own an American pilgrimage"

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