Fuck Nicholas Sparks
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Hollywood is cranking out yet another Nicholas Sparks movie (The Best of Me, for those keeping track). And I would like to take this opportunity to get something off my chest: Oh my God, I cannot stand the Nicholas Sparks Hollywood perpetual motion entertainment machine.
I despise his smarmy, clammy, treacly bullshit. Down with A Walk to Remember, down with The Last Song, and, yes, down with the fucking Notebook.
Let’s get something out of the way right here and now. I’m no high-culture elitist, turning up my nose at whatever flies off the WalMart shelves. In fact, one of the things about Sparks that most sticks in my craw is his attitude about the tendency to label his writing “romance.” He doesn’t write that bitch shit, y’all: “If you look for me, I’m in the fiction section. Romance has its own section,” he huffed to USA Today in 2010, adding that he writes “Love stories — it’s a very different genre.” He continued in this vein:
“A romance novel is supposed to make you escape into a fantasy of romance. What is the purpose of what I do? These are love stories. They went from (Greek tragedies), to Shakespeare‘s Romeo and Juliet, then Jane Austen did it, put a new human twist on it. Hemingway did it with A Farewell to Arms.”
That’s one of his favorites, and he points it out as he walks the aisles of the bookstore.
“Hemingway. See, they’re recommending The Garden of Eden, and I read that. It was published after he was dead. It’s a weird story about this honeymoon couple, and a third woman gets involved. Uh, it’s not my cup of tea.” Sparks pulls the one beside it off the shelf. “A Farewell to Arms, by Hemingway. Good stuff. That’s what I write,” he says, putting it back. “That’s what I write.”
That’s what he writes. He writes sensitive manly books about sensitive manly men having sensitive manly feelings. Not romance. He literally has a section of his website FAQs devoted to the difference between “love stories” and “romance novels.”
Though both have romantic elements, the sub-genres have different requirements. Love stories must use universal characters and settings. Romance novels are not bound by this requirement and characters can be rich, famous, or people who lived centuries ago, and the settings can be exotic. Love stories can differ in theme, romance novels have a general theme—”the taming of a man.” And finally, romance novels usually have happy endings while love stories are not bound by this requirement. Love stories usually end tragically or, at best, on a bittersweet note.
The actual difference, as far as I’m concerned: The romance genre is actually peddling a vastly more appealing vision of enduring love. (Hear me out.) Notwithstanding the secret babies and the MEGA ANGST and the billionaire doms and the wacky meets cute, romance novels are all basically about finding someone with whom it is practical to share your life and establishing a bond built to last. (Hence there’s generally some major internal obstacle the couple has to work through.) Not about finding someone who teaches you a lesson about ~life~and~meaning~and~the~stars~ and then croaks of cancer so the relationship requires no further maintenance.