Book Discussion Group: June
Salzmann Library, Saint Francis De Sales Seminary, Thursday, June 18, 2015 at 6:30pm
The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage
by Paul Elie
"The story of four modern American Catholics who made literature out of their search for God.
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. The Life You Save May Be Your Own 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, ardently read one another's books, and grappled with what one of them called a "predicament shared in common."
A pilgrimage is a journey taken in light of a story; and in The Life You Save May Be Your Own, 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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This title is the choice for Salzmann Library's June Book Discussion Group.
If you are interested in learning more about this book, reading works by the aforementioned authors, or reading more about them, we currently have a display featuring our book club pick.
Read On Pilgrimage by Dorothy Day, Walker Percy's The Moviegoer, Flannery O'Connor's Everything that Rises Must Converge, or Thomas Merton's famous book The Seven Story Mountain. If you prefer biographies, we have Flannery by Brad Gooch and many others. Then come to the library to discuss and learn more about these four authors and their works.
We look forward to seeing you! (SalzmannStaff)… (more)
by Paul Elie
"The story of four modern American Catholics who made literature out of their search for God.
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. The Life You Save May Be Your Own 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, ardently read one another's books, and grappled with what one of them called a "predicament shared in common."
A pilgrimage is a journey taken in light of a story; and in The Life You Save May Be Your Own, 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 title is the choice for Salzmann Library's June Book Discussion Group.
If you are interested in learning more about this book, reading works by the aforementioned authors, or reading more about them, we currently have a display featuring our book club pick.
Read On Pilgrimage by Dorothy Day, Walker Percy's The Moviegoer, Flannery O'Connor's Everything that Rises Must Converge, or Thomas Merton's famous book The Seven Story Mountain. If you prefer biographies, we have Flannery by Brad Gooch and many others. Then come to the library to discuss and learn more about these four authors and their works.
We look forward to seeing you! (SalzmannStaff)… (more)
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