Be. Do. Write.
Donald Miller reflects on what it's like to have your life become a movie script.
Brett McCracken | posted 9/29/2009 09:49AM
Donald Miller's Blue Like Jazz became a breakout sensation in 2003, for a number of very good reasons. For starters, the memoir—subtitled "Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality"—was splendidly written. But it was also zeitgeisty in the best sense of the word, capturing the emerging momentum of the Christian hipster set: the 20- and 30-something demographic of post-Religious Right evangelicals for whom the hip/irreverent Relevant magazine was launched (also in 2003). The book was a breath of fresh air for many young Christians seeking less corny ways to express their faith. It was a pretty big deal.
It makes a lot of sense, then, that six years, four books, and untold sales later, Miller's latest—A Million Miles in a Thousand Years (Thomas Nelson)—uses Blue Like Jazz as a starting point.
You see, this book is (ostensibly) about the process of turning Jazz into a movie. Two filmmakers come calling, Miller agrees to have his life scripted for the screen, and the three men collaborate on a screenplay. It's a chance for Miller to "edit his life," to make it more structured, compelling, and, well, movie-like. Does his life, like Casablanca, have purpose in every scene and every line of dialogue? Will his life leave observers with a beautiful feeling as the credits roll?
These questions stand at the heart of A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, which is essentially a stream-of-consciousness meditation on story, how our lives are like stories, the theory of narrative, God as a writer, and so on. It's a movie-like book about a book becoming a movie. The prose alternates between episodic, cinematic "scenes" and philosophical ruminations about story. It's all very meta and postmodern and layered in an Adaptation sort of way.
Gimmicky though it may be, Million Miles feels very much of the times. A central tension is the burden of making one's life meaningful—meaningful in the sense of living life theatrically, in dramatic ways and for an audience. Meaningful in the sense of cutting out the boring parts and focusing on conflict, climax, and resolution. In the shallow age of YouTube and The Hills, the expectation to live public, drama-filled lives is simply presumed. Miller's longing to live a more engrossing story is par for the course in an era of digital exhibitionism.
There is a decided undercurrent of narcissism here, but Miller is largely transparent about it. "Who thinks they are so important they need to write books about themselves?" he wonders, later admitting that in writing himself into a movie, he wanted to create the person he wishes he were, the one worth telling stories about—not necessarily his true self. He could just as easily have been describing the "create yourself as you want to be perceived," avatar world of Facebook.
The particular Donald Miller we get in this book is a mix between Indiana Jones and Forrest Gump. He's a globetrotting, backpack-wearing, truism-speaking adventurer who always seems to be on a trip, traveling, or otherwise in motion. Travel, as one might guess, is a major theme. The title hints at this, though its origins in the book are a tad less eloquent than one might expect from the author who once described stars as "silent mysteries swirling in the blue like jazz." This time, the title comes from a strange description of heaven as a sort of airport, where new arrivals are shuttled by angels who have to drive "a million miles in a thousand years." I didn't really get that image.
October 2009, Vol. 53, No. 10
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