4 of 6

Blue Like Jazz takes its title from the notion that jazz music does not resolve, which Miller sees as a metaphor for the ambiguities of the life of faith in God. But if anything, Blue resolves its beefs with evangelicalism succinctly and consistently, with chapters that are more like the 3-minute condensations of pop rock than the lingering improvisations of jazz. The book is a tour through sites of frustration for evangelicals, especially young evangelicals. Chapter titles include "Belief," "Church," "Romance," "Community," "Money," "Worship," and "Love." On each subject, Miller begins by describing a well-known problem with slight insolence, but ends by offering, well, a resolution. In "Church," he writes, "I don't like institutionalized anything," listing beefs with churches he's attended. But within a few pages, he tells the story of his current church in Portland, Oregon, and writes, "So one of the things I had to do after God provided a church for me was to let go of any bad attitude I had against other churches I'd gone to. In the end, I was just different, you know. It wasn't that they were bad; they just didn't do it for me."

Miller says fans of Blue are "people who don't want to be in evangelical culture but don't want to reject it either." He gives voice to their cultural hang-ups and agrees there is a problem—Yeah, Christianity can be lame that way—but quickly suggests they move on.

Miller pledges that his writing style will change significantly with his next book, A Map of Eden, which debuts in 2008. He says he learned the most about himself from writing his most recent book, To Own a Dragon, which chronicles Miller's experience of growing up without a father and offers lessons he gleaned from a mentoring relationship with photographer John MacMurray. It is also his most focused, consistently well-written book. But Miller says that as he wrote Dragon, he found his heavily personalized writing style was not challenging anymore—it lacked the thrill of creative discovery. (He's rediscovered the thrill with a screenplay version of Blue Like Jazz, co-written with Steve Taylor and Ben Pearson. And he has plans to create a television show, set in the famed Powell's bookstore in Portland.)

To date, Miller's writing style has been casual, even lackadaisical. Most chapters in his books take the form of mini-essays, but they're more like long e-mails written to a friend than prose intended for mass consumption. Like most authors, Miller writes in a style he admires: "The books I like are the ones that get you feeling like you are with a person, hanging out with a person who is being quite vulnerable, telling you all sorts of stuff that is personal," he writes in Searching. He says he got that feeling from Anne Lamott's Traveling Mercies and credits that book with giving shape to his voice.

But Miller represents a new kind of casual. Published writing is generally a step removed from everyday speech, but Miller's style quotes the quotidian. Consider a sample from Blue Like Jazz, chosen at random:

My most recent faith struggle is not one of intellect. I don't really do that anymore. Sooner or later you just figure out there are some guys who don't believe in God and they can prove he doesn't exist, and some other guys who do believe in God and they can prove he does exist, and the argument stopped being about God a long time ago and now it's about who is smarter, and honestly I don't care.

next page... |  4 of 6

share this page

June 2007, Vol. 51, No. 6