Includes bibliographical references (p. 475-534) and index.
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.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.