I recently finished Donald Miller's
Through Painted Deserts : light, God, and beauty on the open road.
It is the revised edition of his first published book :
Prayer and the Art of Volkswagen maintenance, and it reads both ways. He is simplistic, telling great stories (like you'd imagine a good writer's first book to be, maybe). But he also strikes off in Miller-style God-ramblings. They are great ramblings including places and people they meet along the way.
And, in terms of
Blue Like Jazz or
Searching for God Know What, this book has even more personal/living character to it because of the narrative it is following. Don and his friend Paul are leaving Houston, Texas for Oregon. Paul is from Oregon - Don has never been. At one point they are discussing loving nature and living in Texas - Paul says:
"I don't mean any disrespect. I truly don't. But Texas isn't nature. Texas is city and smog and humidity and heat. If you want to hunt and fish, that's fine, but if you want to climb and kayak and all, no luck."This is their journey, and it is a perfect context for Miller to weave questions and inspirations about life. AND - I read in a
Q & A with Don that he had hoped to include the words "in America" to the title - "light, God, and beauty on the open road in America." That is fitting; this book relates to our specific American society right now, from the land's terrian to the culture's values. These are the painted deserts this book moves through.
Of course, this connection with the land is a huge draw for me. I'm not ashamed of that - and I don't think it's something like, "well, Shaun likes Thoreau and Wendell Berry ... you know, that connection to nature stuff." No. That's not why I like this book. I think there is a theme in great writers and thinkers of the act of land, nature, and wildness feeding our imagination. I don't think it's some "style" of writing that I just happen to enjoy and some writers just happen to employ.
Here's quote I love from
Through Painted Deserts "the Woods" chapter. Don finds himself in the woods, staring at the stars at night:
... nature has never inspired me until now. God is an artist, I think to myself. I have known this for a long time, seeing His brushwork in the sunrise and sunset, and His sculpting in the mountains and the rivers. But the night sky is His greatest work. And I would have never known it if I had stayed in Houston. I would have bought a little condo and filled it with Ikea trinkets and dated some girl just because she was hot and would have read self-help books, end to end, one after another, trying to fix the gaping hole in the bottom of my soul, the hole that, right now, seems plugged with Orion, allowing my soul to collect that feeling of belonging and love you only get when you stop long enough to engage the obvious.These declarations line the book, couched within the story of two guys beginning a friendship & asking real life questions on the roads of America in a volkswagen van. The first chapter is titled
Leaving. The last chapter is titled
Sunrise. They are most appropriate to the story; and it is good from beginning to end.
highly recommended,
-s.o
