The life you save may be your own : an American pilgrimage

Resource Information

The work The life you save may be your own : an American pilgrimage represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in Union Presbyterian Seminary Libraries. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

The life you save may be your own : an American pilgrimage

Title remainder

an American pilgrimage

Statement of responsibility

Paul Elie

Creator

• Elie, Paul

Subject

• American literature -- Catholic authors | History and criticism
• Authors, American -- 20th century -- Biography
• Catholics -- United States -- Biography
• Catholics -- United States -- Intellectual life -- 20th century
• Christianity and literature -- United States -- History -- 20th century
• American literature -- 20th century -- History and criticism
• Merton, Thomas, 1915-1968,
• O'Connor, Flannery
• Percy, Walker, 1916-1990,
• Day, Dorothy, 1897-1980,

Genre

• Biography

Language

eng

Summary

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

Biography type

contains biographical information

Cataloging source

DLC

Dewey number

810.9/9222

Illustrations

illustrations

Index

index present

LC call number

PS153.C3

LC item number

E45 2003

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

bibliography