From Publishers Weekly
Four 20th-century writers whose work was steeped in their shared Catholic faith come together in this masterful interplay of biography and literary criticism. Elie, an editor at Farrar, Straus & Giroux, where three of the four writers published their work, lays open the lives and writings of the monk Thomas Merton, Catholic Worker founder Dorothy Day, and novelists Flannery O'Connor and Walker Percy. Drawing 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, Elie writes, they were unified as pilgrims moving toward the same destination while taking different paths. As they sought truth through their writing, he observes, they provided "patterns of experience" that future pilgrims could read into their lives. This volume (the title is taken from a short story of the same name by O'Connor) is an ambitious undertaking and one that could easily have become ponderous, but Elie's presentation of the material is engaging and thoughtful, inspiring reflection and further study. Beginning with four separate figures joined only by their Catholicism and their work as writers, he deftly connects them, using their correspondence, travels, places of residence, their religious experiences and their responses to the tumultuous events of their times. This thoroughly researched and well-sourced work deserves attention from students of history, literature and religion, but it will be of special significance to Catholic readers interested in the expression of faith in the modern world. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
Elie has fashioned a fascinating multiple biography of four of the most influential Catholic literary figures of the twentieth century. Interweaving the life stories of Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day, Walker Percy, and Flannery O'Connor, he illustrates how all four integrated the theme of pilgrimage into their work. He also analyzes the literary pilgrimages each of his subjects embarked upon during lifetimes devoted to reading, writing, and contemplation. Of primary significance to each of these authors was religion. Merton, Day, and Percy were all converts who zealously incorporated their adopted faith into both their daily lives and their writing. O'Connor, born and bred a Catholic among Protestants, instilled a thoroughly original sense of divine irony into her fiction. These four biographies serve as a backdrop for the scholarly analysis of the inspirational intersection of life, art, and religion. Margaret Flanagan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Review
"Paul Elie's book is lucid, humane, poignant, and wise. As a work of the spirit, it is universal and in no way sectarian." -Harold Bloom

"They make a memorable quartet--Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy--in Paul Elie's brilliant new study. Founder of the Catholic Worker movement, Dorothy Day finally emerges as a saintly and heroic figure. Though I thought I knew everything about the other three, who were my close friends in our author-editor rapport, Elie's insights into each member of this highly gifted and complex trio (Merton, O'Connor, Percy) strike me as fresh and original and his discoveries are new. The Life You Save May Be Your Own is a remarkable book." -Robert Giroux

"Paul Elie's book reads like a magnificent novel, with four deeply distinct characters who just happen to have been the best Catholic American writers of the twentieth century." -Richard Rodriguez

"We are surrounded by many examples of mediocre criticism and not a few of good criticism, but great criticism comes our way but once or twice in a generation. Paul Elie's witty searchlight of a book is great criticism. Shining with insight on the multitesselated mosaic of American literature in the postwar period, it manages miraculously to illuminate the complexities of religious experience in real human lives." -Thomas Cahill



Review
"Paul Elie's book is lucid, humane, poignant, and wise. As a work of the spirit, it is universal and in no way sectarian." -Harold Bloom

"They make a memorable quartet--Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy--in Paul Elie's brilliant new study. Founder of the Catholic Worker movement, Dorothy Day finally emerges as a saintly and heroic figure. Though I thought I knew everything about the other three, who were my close friends in our author-editor rapport, Elie's insights into each member of this highly gifted and complex trio (Merton, O'Connor, Percy) strike me as fresh and original and his discoveries are new. The Life You Save May Be Your Own is a remarkable book." -Robert Giroux

"Paul Elie's book reads like a magnificent novel, with four deeply distinct characters who just happen to have been the best Catholic American writers of the twentieth century." -Richard Rodriguez

"We are surrounded by many examples of mediocre criticism and not a few of good criticism, but great criticism comes our way but once or twice in a generation. Paul Elie's witty searchlight of a book is great criticism. Shining with insight on the multitesselated mosaic of American literature in the postwar period, it manages miraculously to illuminate the complexities of religious experience in real human lives." -Thomas Cahill



Book Description
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.



About the Author
Paul Elie, an editor at FSG, has written for The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, and Commonweal. He lives in Manhattan.

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review from Discover Great New Writers
In the middle of the last century, a Trappist monk, a Greenwich Village bohemian, a melancholy doctor who abandoned medicine to write, and a young, chronically ill southern woman defined a unique moment in American Catholic intellectual life. Dubbed jokingly "the School of the Holy Ghost," Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day, Walker Percy, and Flannery O'Connor differed in almost every conceivable way but one: They all approached literature as a religious experience, infusing their writing with the struggle for faith in the modern world.

Elie's book may look daunting, but broken down into bite-sized chunks, it promises great rewards as he entwines the lives of these four unique souls. Merton, who spent most of his adult life at a monastery, is best known for The Seven Storey Mountain. Day founded the Catholic Worker movement, lived with the poor, and worked tirelessly for social justice. Percy won the National Book Award for his novel The Moviegoer; and O'Connor, an acclaimed novelist and short story writer, lived with her family until her death at 39.

Individually, they lived outside traditional literary circles, and their interaction was limited. But Elie's research reveals both their awareness of each other's work and their shared concerns, and his considerable talent as a writer and deep affection for his subjects animates the lives of these writer-pilgrims convincingly, breathing new life into their work. (Spring 2003 Selection)

FROM THE PUBLISHER

In the middle of the twentieth century, four American Catholics, working independently of one another, came to believe that the best way to explore the quandaries of religious faith was in writing - 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 foundress of the Catholic Worker movement and its penny newspaper in New York; Flannery O'Connor a "Christ-centered" 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 four writers' story as a pilgrimage from the God-posessed 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 their readers 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.

FROM THE CRITICS

The San Francisco Chronicle

[An] engrossing, smartly conceived and perfectly realized work.—Tom Nolan

The Washington Post

Elie's long, well-documented and informative book weaves together the lives of all four figures into a single continuous chronicle. This is no mean feat, for none of the four actually intersected with the others in any sustained way, although, as was inevitable, they all came to know one another personally or literarily once they became famous. — Charlotte Allen

The New Yorker

This long, unusual book consists of interleaved biographies of four mid-century American writers -- Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Walker Percy, and Flannery O'Connor -- who, though they rarely, if ever, met, are connected by the fact that they were all serious Roman Catholics and therefore alone: isolated both from literary circles (anti-religious) and from the Church (anti-literary). Except for O'Connor, they were converts; they "read their way" to religious experience, and then became writers, so that others could pick up the trail. They were very different -- Day was devoted to social service, Percy to philosophy, O'Connor to literature, Merton to the inner journey -- and Elie doesn't love them all equally. O'Connor is his favorite. Merton is the one he struggles with, but, by virtue of his warm, clear writing (better than Merton's), he makes us care about the self-involved friar, too.

Publishers Weekly

Four 20th-century writers whose work was steeped in their shared Catholic faith come together in this masterful interplay of biography and literary criticism. Elie, an editor at Farrar, Straus & Giroux, where three of the four writers published their work, lays open the lives and writings of the monk Thomas Merton, Catholic Worker founder Dorothy Day, and novelists Flannery O'Connor and Walker Percy. Drawing 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, Elie writes, they were unified as pilgrims moving toward the same destination while taking different paths. As they sought truth through their writing, he observes, they provided "patterns of experience" that future pilgrims could read into their lives. This volume (the title is taken from a short story of the same name by O'Connor) is an ambitious undertaking and one that could easily have become ponderous, but Elie's presentation of the material is engaging and thoughtful, inspiring reflection and further study. Beginning with four separate figures joined only by their Catholicism and their work as writers, he deftly connects them, using their correspondence, travels, places of residence, their religious experiences and their responses to the tumultuous events of their times. This thoroughly researched and well-sourced work deserves attention from students of history, literature and religion, but it will be of special significance to Catholic readers interested in the expression of faith in the modern world. (Apr.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

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