Marjoe

New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1973. BOOK: Previous Owner Markings/Ex-Library; Previous Owner Markings (The Thomson Collection In Memory of Willis I. Thomson Bookplate Affixed to Reverse of Front Free Endpaper); Light Shelf Rub to Boards; Spine Moderately Cocked; Edges Moderately Soiled; Moderate Yellowing Due to Age. DUST JACKET: Previous Owner Markings (Price Clipped--Poorly, Slightly Encompassing Overleaf Text); Moderately Discoloured Where Jacket Was Once Affixed with Adhesive to Book; Lightly Creased; Lightly Chipped; In Archival Quality Jacket Cover. SUB-TITLE: The Life of Marjoe Gortner. BOOK NUMBER: 0673. DESIGNED BY: Gloria Adelson. SYNOPSIS: From Henry James in The Bostonians through Sinclair Lewis in Elmer Gantry, our writers have been drawn to that singular American phenomenon, the money-making faith healer and/or evangelist. They have tried to assess the ratio of fraud to honest faith in these strangely compounded personalities, the exact mix of charlatanism and sacred inspiration. And they have analyzed the social hungers these people have fed...or, in another view, exploited: the drabness, deprivation, emotional famine that have created their "market." Here, from the inside, is the unretouched story of a young American of exceptional intelligence who was for years a superstar in the evangelical orbit. Marjoe Gortner, grandson and son of ministers, was himself ordained at the age of four. Slightly more than a year later he officiated at the marriage of an American sailor and his girl, an incident that provoked a national scandal and signaled the wave of notoriety the boy was to ride for the next decade. With his father as advance man, his mother as coach, and his younger brother as supernumerary, the youngster crisscrossed the continent, preaching hell and damnation--and salvation--to big-city congregations and the rural poor, supporting his family in very considerable luxury. But adolescence, as it must to all children, came to Marjoe Gortner. The angelic child became a gangling, unprepossessing youth. The crowds became smaller, the "love offerings" more meager; his father decamped, and the "Miracle Child" went into eclipse. During the next few years, led by their indefatigable mother, the family hit town after town, from Kentucky to California, in the hope of finding some profitable connection, some ore-bearing lode. Eventually Marjoe was once more gainfully employed, this time as a barker on the Santa Cruz boardwalk, his virtuoso talents as spectacular--and effective--as ever. At sixteen he met Ann. Soon she was pregnant, and Marjoe, despite his mother's protests, insisted on marrying her. By the time he was twenty, marriage and fatherhood had pushed him into a humdrum middle-class existence...and despair. His life, as he saw it, was over. But he was wrong. He was to discover love again, preach again, and taste triumph again. And he was to learn, slowly, that the gifts which had made him the Miracle Child really belonged to him, and that he had the right to use them in his own way, for his own purposes and nobody else's. Steven S. Gaines, twenty-six, was born and raised in New York, where he continues to make his home. This is his first book.. First Edition 1st Printing. Hard Cover. Good/Good. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. Ex-Library.