This didn’t turnout as good as I wanted it to be, but putting things off to the last minute tends to leave you rushed. But at least it’s a good way of getting things done. So here’s a little conspiracy theory I have been working on. I hope to have either Nathan or Christine give it to Donald Miller this week.
What the world needs to know about Donald Miller
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a good poet in possession of a good idea, is a thief.
Donald Miller writes in his book Blue Like Jazz a chapter about romance. He begins the chapter by going through the dating ideologies of his friends. His friend Kurt found a wife by dating as many girls as possible at once. Another friend Josh got married by becoming Amish and writing a best seller. And Mike is a smart guy who reads a lot of books—not sure if he ever got married.
In the last paragraph of his book Don shares a small piece of advice he never used: read the book Pride and Prejudice. So, being a guy who could use all the help he could get, last summer I went to Chapters, our local bookstore, and bought a copy of Pride and Prejudice.
Throughout the summer I read about a chapter a night. One night, after a Tuesday Blue Like Jazz study meeting at my church, I drove my friend Suzie home. For some strange reason, unknown to me, my mother keeps pink Christian romance novels between the two fronts seats of our family van, and Suzie, being the observant girl that she is, noticed the books. This led to the usual glowing remarks, “Oh Brian… I see you have a special interest… Oh, the night was sweet and bliss as he kindled me under the moonlight…”
After being humiliated that night I laid on my bed, and after putting down my copy of Pride and Prejudice on the stool by my bedside, the most brilliant idea came to me.
The following Sunday morning I picked up the same girl Suzie for church. It was an early morning for both of us since we are involved in our church’s children’s ministry. Suzie was tired, bags were under her eyes, and her mind was stuck in her own little planet. Her heavy eyes were focused on the dashboard, and then slowly turned to the spot between the two seats of the van:
“Pride and Prejudice!!!” she exclaimed while bursting in laughter. “Brian! You just made my day! I think this would be better kept on the dashboard.”
I turned my face slightly to the right and smiled.
Later that fall I finished reading the book.
This was how my connection to Pride and Prejudice was born. I would blog about this whole story of the van, Suzie, and the book. I became known in my church as the man who read Pride and Prejudice. I would start conversations with woman in the foyer about Pride and Prejudice, and comment about all the Wickhams in the congregation. I became such the Pride and Prejudice freak that a commercial promoting our student ministry was even made about the book and me.
Every Saturday I usually follow the same routine. I would wake up, get out of bed, and head to the coffee shop down the street to read, write, or pray. With my tall black coffee cup next to my right, and my bulky backpack on the seat to my left, I decided this particular Saturday I needed inspiration—so I read a few chapters from a book called Blue Like Jazz. While carefully eating my carrot muffin, I slowly turned each page grasping the each word and bit of wisdom. Then it hit me.
To this very day I can remember how it felt. It was more painful than discovering that Santa Claus doesn’t wash his hands after using the bathroom. That very moment, while beat box jazz music was being played on the speakers, I came to the most shocking revelation I would face my entire life, the revelation that Donald Miller is a liar, and a poetic thief.
Donald Miller has read Pride and Prejudice.
I was reading the chapter on romance when I came to this passage where Miller shares a conversation he had with a woman:
“…I was going on like this, being a realist and all, and I suspect I was saying stupid things like this because I have not read
Pride and Prejudice because it turns out these ideas are not the keys to a woman’s heart.”
The lead hero in the book, Mr. Darcy, is a character who is proud, rude, and arrogant. He lacks all the right words and charisma. Mr. Darcy parallels the male character in Miller’s chapter on romance that says stupid things. And as it turns out, the key to a woman’s heart is not “countenance, voice, and manner,” those are qualities that establish Wickham. The irony in the statement, “I suspect I was saying stupid things like this because I have not read Pride and Prejudice,” is just too profound to have been accidental.
There is only one reason a writer could possibly lie about something so important: Katie Couric. Doing a quick search on Google revealed that she has already done an interview with Colin Firth, the actor who played Mr. Darcy in the movie version of Pride and Prejudice. A journalist like Katie Couric would never want to do the same story twice, and would therefore be bored by another male celebrity connected to book Pride and Prejudice—this is why Donald Miller chose to conceal his true literary tastes. So by masking his tastes behind Emily Dickinson, Miller hoped to create a book that would grab the attention of the renowned journalist.
Related posts: