RAISED WITH WOLVES

Donald Miller is an asshole. If you are a twenty-something Christian who listens to both Iron and Wine and Hillsong United, you have likely read Blue Like Jazz, Donald Miller’s New York Times’ Best Selling book about a twenty-something navigating what he nonchalantly calls “Christian Spirituality”. If you have read his book, and you are not an english major, you probably liked it a whole lot, citing it as “the best piece of religious-nonfiction since Pat Robertson wrote that one book in the 90’s, or Left Behind”.

(a christian documentary)

The book was suggested to me by a number of my friends at college. I assumed that since it was popular it probably wasn’t worth my time, so I never read it. But when my friend Steve, who was staying at our house in Houston, brought it over and said it was worth reading, and Gardy piped in that it was the only book he’d ever read voluntarily, I figured I’d give it a shot. Not because I valued their literary opinion, but because I didn’t have anything else to read at that time.

I started the book with low expectations, reading it in the bathroom and before bed. Sure, it was on the Best Seller’s list, but that doesn’t mean that it is worth reading, and it certainly doesn’t mean that it is literature. Twilight is on the best seller’s list. Twilight.

(Pictured: Literature)

Let me first say this: Blue Like Jazz is not on my list of top 10 or even top 20 books, but Donald Miller surprised me. He surprised me in the way that the movie Hot Tub Time Machine surprised me last night: I went in with low expectations, and they were exceeded. Miller wrote a collection of essays that were uber-approachable, sometimes teetering on banality, but there were nuggets of profundity surrounded by his neigh-base conversationalism. His style turned me off at first, but it made for a quick, light read that I saturated with yellow-highlighter ink.

But this entry is not to sing the praises of Donald Miller. This entry is a middle finger to the 30-something, published, and probably moderately wealthy Houstonian, Christian author from a 20-something, unpublished and definitely moderately poor Houstonian, formerly Christian non-author. Fuck you Donald Miller; I hope you’re reading this.

As I was saying, I read the book in a few days, and actually enjoyed it until I got to a chapter near the end. As I read the chapter entitled “Alone”, I was dumbfounded. With every paragraph I read I became more livid. I could not believe what I was reading. I wanted to find Miller and confront him. I didn’t know what I’d do to him exactly, but it wouldn’t be pleasant for anyone involved.

Let me back up a few years to when I was attending a Christian college in a Dallas Suburb. I made the acquaintance of a handsome, hip, probably progressive, English major named David in my American lit class. I haven’t spoken to him in some time but I still have his copy of Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five on my bookshelf. We got to talking about favorite poets one day and I told him that mine was Emily Dickinson. I told him that I had a crush on her since first reading her poem, A Fly Buzzed When I Died.

I explained to him that there’s just something about her. She is broken and beautiful and if I could have gone back in time, I wouldn’t have punched Hitler or stopped Pearl Harbor or whatever, I would have seduced Emily Dickinson. I became pretty obsessed with the idea of loving her. My girlfriend bought me her entire collected works, and I read her poetry before bed every night. She was a recluse and possibly a lesbian, but she had so much capacity for love welling up in her imaginably frail frame. There was a period of a few weeks that I was actually depressed upon realizing that I could never ever be with her, and I had a sick sort of fantasy of making love to her ghost.

(Sexy…)

I was sort of embarrassed admitting all of this to David, but he wasn’t phased by my confession.

“Actually, I read a book that says that some huge number– I don’t know the statistic or anything– of high school males, especially those interested in literature, develop these uncontrollable crushes on Emily Dickinson. I don’t know what it is but it’s a pretty interesting phenomenon. You’re not alone, man. I felt the same way about her in high school.”

I was so relieved to hear that I wasn’t a creep, and I found the idea pretty provocative. I started planning on writing a short story that revolved around the idea of a delusional English major falling in love with Emily Dickinson, his graphic masturbatory fantasies of making love to her ghost, and a climax in Amherst, Massachusetts (her burial place and hometown) ending with his untimely death. The point of the story would be that one can fall in love with just about anyone, proving that the idea of the soul mate is flawed, and that practicality should sometimes override emotionalism.

I thought long and hard about the plot, and even talked with a published Christian author about the story. We discussed that it could even involve some pseudo-time traveling and that he would very explicitly have sex with Dickinson, saving her from her depression and lonliness, and ultimately saving himself.

I never wrote that story. Like all of my ideas for short stories, I simply never got around to it. Fiction is hard for me, and it’s hard to muster up the motivation to commit to something of that scale. But I always planned on writing it. I thought it was subversive and provocative and relatable enough to be worthwhile.

But do you know who did write that story? That exact same story? I’ll give you one guess: well it’s Donald Miller. What are the odds? You just took one-third of my decent fiction ideas from me and just jammed it into your book. I’m not saying I could have written it better, but it feels completely awkward and out of place in a book on “Christian Spirituality”, whatever the hell that is.

I’d say go out and read it for yourself, but I don’t want you supporting his psychic-demon-future mind reading plagiarism so I’ll include a few quotes straight from Blue Like Jazz:

(I hope that cigarette kills you, you demon-psychic bastard)

“I would read the poetry of Emily Dickinson out loud and pretend to have conversations with her…I asked her if she was a lesbian. For the record, she told me she wasn’t a lesbian…She was lovely, really, sort of like a quiet scared dog, but she engaged fine when she warmed up to me…

Did he just compare my Emily to a dog? Miller, You asshole.

And explaining why guys have crushes on her: “…Emily is an intellectual submissive, and intellectual men fear the domination of women”.

He goes on to explain that he drove all the way from Portland to Massachusetts to visit her home in Amherst and that he saw Emily Dickinson, or her ghost, or something there. He described her thin neck, her red lips, her ankles, her waist,  and sure, he didn’t go as far as pining her down and having his way with her, but its all in the subtext.

I thought back on my conversation about Emily Dickinson with my classmate in Dallas. I realized that David was referring to this book. Of course he was. He wore skinny jeans and had a hipster beard and read Vonnegut. They all read Vonnegut. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was a conversation about Blue Like Jazz that got me thinking about writing that story, and it was finally reading the book, four years later, that made me decide not to write the story– the idea came full circle. It was Donald Miller’s idea all along, and it was mine, and it was David’s and it was all of ours collectively. He was using the story to illustrate the problems of being in solitude, and what loneliness can do to a person, and I was using it to illustrate the idea that proximity and practicality are more important than romantic emotionalism, but both streams sprang from the same well.

I was robbed of a story that would have been Sex Drive meets Ghost and a Bronte novel; I feel a little cheated by Donald Miller. I mean, he already has a few books under his belt and supposedly an upcoming movie, why does he need my simple love story about Dickinson’s ghost? But I suppose it isn’t your fault, Don. I’ll blame it on the collective unconscious; great minds think alike. Or in this case, delusional, mediocre minds think alike.