I once read an article in some women’s magazine or other about the characteristics of people who successfully overcome hard things.  A lot of the advice was just what you would expect: don’t hold grudges; look on the bright side; count your blessings.  All pretty standard.  But there was one piece of wisdom that really stayed with me.  Successful and contented people, this psychobabble writer asserted, are those who can sometimes think of themselves in the third person.  For example, Suzy gets laid off unexpectedly from her job and is understandably bummed about this.  But what sets Suzy apart is her ability to say, “Suzy grieved the sudden setback in a much-loved career, but she knew that what her friends and colleagues were all saying was really true: she would find an even better position.”  In other words, happy people have the enviable ability to stand a little bit outside of their own stories and imagine themselves as characters in an unfolding drama.  Like all characters, they experience conflict, but since they are the heroes of the story and not the victims, they have confidence that they can take it all on the chin.

Don Miller recounts a transformation much like this in his deceptively simple new memoir, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Own Life.  The conceit of the book is that Miller’s failure-to-launch lifestyle gets a jolt when a couple of movie producers want to make a film of his first memoir, the million-copy bestseller Blue Like Jazz.  Miller presents his years since Blue Like Jazz as a fog of slight meandering (which doesn’t actually do justice to the relentless touring, blogging, promoting, and speaking he’s been doing since then, but that’s another story).  He throws himself into the movie project largely because he doesn’t want to face his new book deadline and has started ducking his publisher’s calls.  He wants the movie “Don” to be an action hero, to fight through an explosion, to get the girl.  So he’s chagrined when the producers tell him that the movie needs to be real enough to relate to the book, but that “Don” needs more character arc.  Real-life Don is too purposeless, too unfocused, to be a movie hero.

Told by the movie producers that every scene, every line of dialogue, needs to serve a larger purpose and drive the plot, Miller takes screenwriting lessons to heart and begins applying them to his rather directionless life. He also, characteristically, uses it all as an opportunity to ask big questions of God. “If my scenes weren’t going anywhere, wasn’t that God’s fault?” he asks.  “I hadn’t made me or anything.  God did that.  So how could I be to blame for my random and meaningless experiences?” But, he decides, only he can change himself.  What follows is a thoroughly American story of transformation, in which seemingly superficial changes (weight loss and exercise; selling the condo) signal much bigger changes afoot (taking a chance on love). Despite the pomo trappings, this is an intriguingly eighteenth-century conversion narrative by one who is Now Found.  At times Miller presents himself a bit too artfully as a treehouse-dwelling dunderhead of a big kid, exaggerating his own immaturity in the early pages, perhaps for effect.  But this makes the book’s satisfying ending all the more cheer-worthy, because he has truly traveled “a million miles in a thousand years.” 

If this book really were a movie, it would be part Adaptation and part Stranger Than Fiction, with a little bit of Rocky thrown in.  It’s a fun and at times illuminating read.  If you’d like to check it out, I have one extra galley that I am going to give away.  In the comments, let me know in 100 words or less why you liked one of Miller’s earlier books and/or can’t wait to read this one.  I’ll announce the winner on Friday.

Comments

[Beth W.]

Still no takers? Heck, I'll make a play for the book, based solely on your recommendation. You pick good books! And I loved Stranger Than Fiction, and I own all of the Rocky movies worth mentioning. Or I can make this much less than 100 words; here is my plea in haiku form:

Jana likes a book?
That is good enough for me.
You know where I live.

[Jana]

Beth, the book is yours because

a) Your haiku made me laugh
b) You just had a birthday
c) Only one other person wrote in (via Facebook), or
d) all of the above.