Placing Donald Miller in the Literary World

When one stumbles upon Donald Miller one does not find in his work an epiphany of literary genius or profound philosophical insights.  He is for all intensive purposes a quaint writer, a normal writer, more akin to a coffeehouse stereotype than Ernest Hemingway machismo.  Miller, the best selling author of Blue Like Jazz, is the perfect literary catalyst, err, anomaly, precisely because of his jarring normalcy, and his literary achievement may one day rest in his ability to deftly and secretly sneak up on evangelical cultural with his creativity.

Well not exactly sneak up.  Miller is the only major evangelical creative writer.  He’s the only one with a movie coming out soon, anyway. His popularity puts him at the unfortunate conjecture of being popular in evangelical circles, which also turns out to be an opportunity.  Through creative nonfiction Miller is allowed to speak to the evangelical world in ways that would, if he were writing nonfiction books, get him labeled a wayward saint faster than Tony Jones.  Where in Jones and other "emergents" or "thinkers" is "theo-ology" in Miller’s Blue Like Jazz and Searching for God Knows What there is "theo-praxis"—Miller actually lives out some crazy spiritual and religious ideas, and if they were contained in bullet points instead of witty prose the bell would have tolled for the death knell of the newly christened heretic.  Creativity is the stream Miller navigates to carry him away from (most) harsh criticism and allows his work to be recognized as intrinsically "evangelical."

Given Miller’s popularity, it is somewhat confusing that he is the only creative writer to become popular in evangelical circles, especially since the usual trophies of evangelical literary critique are C.S. Lewis (Anglican!) and J.R.R. Tolkien (Roman Catholic!).  Not exactly the best representation of the demographic if we have to borrow from the mainliners and papists all the time…and this is further compounded by the refusal to read contemporaries like Frederick Buechner and Annie Dillard as "Christian."  Much more perplexing than the sub-genre of Christian Contemporary Music is the division of Christian Contemporary Fiction, which is not even remotely artful in any but its most underground and off the radar forms. Miller is the evangelical literary anomaly, the one evangelical writer actually represented within evangelicalism.

So with Miller there is both beginning and end, for he is the first and the last, especially given the current publishing climate.  This begs the question: eventually as the climate improves or new doors open, what will follow in his footsteps?

First, what is following is the license Miller has given writers and future artists to live in the "in the world but not of the world" paradox.  Miller as an artist is entrenched within the evangelical world (he’s still publishing with Nelson, after all) yet his storytelling permits the reader to venture out into the "evil" world and find joy and meaningful spirituality.  The evangelical author is pushing others beyond the system.  

Second, what will hopefully follow is a meaningful and organized representation of evangelical art within the culture at large.  This has happened in music, movies, and painting to various degrees, but it has not really taken a hold in literature.  Miller pushes no literary bounds and will most likely not be brought into the canon of American literary classics, his creative nonfiction being thoroughly grounded and not avant garde like an Annie Dillard segmented essay, yet as an artist he is serving as the catalyst for organization—a centering force, a crack in the window that can allow others to follow after.

Third, Miller most importantly reintroduces the need for literary criticism within evangelical readership with the last chapter of Searching for God Knows What.  A profound and insightful chapter on the gospel within Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Miller’s essay opens up the opportunity for meaningful Christian criticism of the literary canon to many readers that would find that kind of thinking foreign.  Evangelicals are not going to go after Leyland Ryken or James K.A. Smith books that readily, but they will read what Miller has to say given his general audience.  

Placing Miller in the literary world, he is best seen as the evangelical forerunner, a taste of a feast that is possible, given the right publishing climate and a fostering of evangelical desire to live out the narrative we write and write the narrative which we live.