[Hac-announce] Book Discussion Reminder: Elmer Gantry, this Saturday 2:30

[Carol Ritter]

Saturday, August 15, 2020
2:30 PM to 4:30 PM EDT


Details

Our book for August is "Elmer Gantry" by Nobel Prize-winning author Sinclair Lewis.

Note: We are working to determine if there is a suitable outdoor location with sufficient social distancing where we can hold the discussion. We will post if that is the case. Otherwise, or in the case of inclement weather, the discussion will be held via the Zoom Platform

>From Amazon:
Universally recognized as a landmark in American literature, "Elmer Gantry" scandalized readers when it was first published, causing Sinclair Lewis to be “invited” to a jail cell in New Hampshire and to his own lynching in Virginia. His portrait of a golden-tongued evangelist who rises to power within his church—a saver of souls who lives a life of duplicity, sensuality, and ruthless self-indulgence—is also the record of a period, a reign of grotesque vulgarity, which but for Lewis would have left no trace of itself. "Elmer Gantry" has been called the greatest, most vital, and most penetrating study of hypocrisy that has been written since the works of Voltaire.

“[Sinclair Lewis’s] satiric indictment of fundamentalist religion that caused an uproar upon its publication in 1927. The title character of Elmer Gantry starts out as a greedy, shallow, philandering Baptist minister, turns to evangelism, and eventually becomes the leader of a large Methodist congregation. Throughout the novel Gantry encounters fellow religious hypocrites [and although] he is often exposed as a fraud, Gantry is never fully discredited. – The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature

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