The Life You Save May Be Your Own

“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

Paul Elie is the author of The Life You Save May Be Your Own and Reinventing Bach, both National Book Critics Circle Award finalists. He is a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, and a regular contributor to The New Yorker. He lives in Brooklyn.

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