Up from Methodism
By: by Herbert Asbury.
Publisher: Thunder's Mouth Press
Published: 2003
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 142
Subjects: Asbury, Herbert, -- 1891-1963 -- Childhood and youth.; Methodists -- Missouri -- Farmington -- Biography.; Methodist Church -- Controversial literature.; Farmington (Mo.) -- Biography.
Genres: Biography.; Controversial literature.
Description: "In 1926, Herbert Asbury, great-great-nephew of Francis Asbury, the first American Bishop of the Methodist Church, submitted a chapter of his profane work-in-progress, an almost spiteful memoir of his boyhood in Farmington, Missouri to H.L. Mencken's American Mercury magazine. Mencken published "Hatrack," the story of the town prostitute. The Mercury was then banned in Boston at the incitement of the New England Watch and Ward Society as "bad, vile, raw stuff," and Mencken was arrested for selling copies on Boston Common." "In its restrained, but unrelenting attack on religious bigotry, irrationality, and hypocrisy, Up From Methodism retains its transgressive power today. In his mocking humor and plain-spun language, used to evoke a bygone South suffocating in its fear of pleasure and damnation, Asbury reveals his debt to another son of Missouri, Mark Twain."--Jacket.
Notes: Originally published: New York : Knopf, 1926. With new foreword.