Nicholas Sparks
Nicholas Sparks stated that he has no contemporaries. No one else does what he does. He writes unpredictable love stories, not trashy run-of-the-mill romance novels like Shakespeare.
Just The Facts
- Nicholas Sparks is an author who churns out about one romance novel a year.
- All of these books are almost immediately made into movies.
- All of these books are the same book.
Nicholas Sparks on Nicholas Sparks
In a recent interview with USA Today, Nicholas Sparks criticized Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Ernest Hemingway, and romance novelists in general for essentially writing the same story over and over:
"(Romances) are all essentially the same story: You've got a woman, she's down on her luck, she meets the handsome stranger who falls desperately in love with her, but he's got these quirks, she must change him, and they have their conflicts, and then they end up happily ever after."
But he claims that he is not a romance novelist. He is a fiction writer who writes love stories.
"You read a romance because you know what to expect. You read a love story because you don't know what to expect."
Really Nicholas Sparks? Really?
Nicholas Sparks Movies
A Walk to Remember
Landon, a rebellious high school student, meets Jamie, the booksmart daughter of a pastor. At first, they have a rocky friendship because they are from different worlds. Jamie offers to help Landon learn lines for a school play if he promises to not fall in love with her. They grow close, but Jamie repeatedly rejects him. Jamie's father does not approve of the relationship.
Then tragedy strikes. Jamie tells Landon that she has Leukemia and is dying and therefore they cannot be together. Landon is forced to reconcile with his estranged father, a doctor who sets up treatment for Jamie. Despite the tragedy, Jamie and Landon continue to grow deeper in love.
They get married and a few months later, Jamie dies.
The Notebook
Noah, a local country boy, falls in love with young heiress, Allie. Since...they are from different worlds, she...repeatedly rejects him. Allie's parents...do not approve of the relationship, which eventually causes them to reluctantly break up. Allie regrets breaking up with him.
Noah writes to her letters every day and she never responds. Noah goes off to fight in World War II and Allie meets another man and gets engaged. Noah comes back from war and meets up with Allie, who tells him that she is engaged. Allie asks why he never wrote her. They make love. The next day, Allie's mother gives her all 365 letters Noah wrote, which she had been hiding from her. She tells Allie that her fiancee knows about Noah. Allie chooses Noah.
Fast forward to the future, and it is discovered that Allie has Alzheimer's and can't remember Noah or her life story. Noah reads from a notebook that contains the above story. That day, Allie miraculously remembers Noah. The next morning, they both wake up in bed together in each other's embrace. Dead.
Nights in Rodanthe
Paul, a surgeon, meets Adrienne at a bed and breakfast in Rodanthe, North Carolina. They fall in love. Paul then goes to South America to...Hold on. Something's not right here. Neve rmind. Paul goes to South America to...reconcile with his estranged son, who is a doctor treating local villagers. Paul helps his son treat the villagers. Paul continues to write letters to Adrienne and their love grows.
Then tragedy strikes. Paul is killed in a South American mudslide.
But, Paul's son thanks Adrienne for changing his father and allowing them to reconcile. Because Paul is dead.
Dear John
John, a simple soldier in the Army, falls in love with sophisticated college student, Savannah, while on leave. They grow closer until John must return to the Army. John must choose to stay in the Army, or be with Savannah. He chooses to stay in the Army. John and Savannah write letters back and forth, but eventually drift apart. Savannah gets engaged while John is in the Army...Wait. Hold on. I think this is the wrong book. I think this is the summary for...No, I'm sorry. I guess it is Dear John. Sorry. Anyway, John comes back from war to spend time with his estranged father, who had a heart attack. John and his father were never close, but they...reconcile shortly before John's father dies. Hold on again. Sorry, this is might be Nights in Rodanthe. No, sorry again. This is from Dear John. So, then John goes to visit Savannah.
Then tragedy strikes. Savannah tells John that her husband has cancer. Wait. What the fuck is going on here? Sorry. I guess this is getting confusing. So, John sells his father's prized coin collection to pay the medical bills and goes back to war.
Savannah's husband dies.
Last Song
The question of which estranged parent the main character reconciles with is immediately apparent in the first chapter of the book when you find out that the main character gets along with her mom. The only question remains is who will get cancer and die. Ronnie, the main character, and her little brother Jonah are reluctantly spending the summer with their estranged father. Ronnie meets Will at the beach and they fall in love. Will is from a wealthy and powerful family. Their romance blossoms. But Will's parents...do not approve. Despite that, their romance continues. Ronnie's friend reconciles with her mother. So now side characters are reconciling with their parents too, I guess. That's different, so we'll give him that.
Then tragedy strikes. Ronnie's dad is diagnosed with (wait for it...) cancer and is dying. Seriously, it's like this guy only know one possible bad thing that could happen to people. No one gets laid off or diagnosed with a lumbar strain. Fuck this guy.
At the end of the summer, Ronnie decides to stay with her father to reconcile with him. She finishes a piano composition that her father had been working on. Her father dies. She asks her mother to send her letters that her father wrote her, but that she never got a chance to read. Holy fucking shit. He's got to be doing that on purpose. It doesn't even make any sense. No one even uses the mail any more. It's like this guy spent every day of his childhood reconciling with his parents, getting cancer, and writing letters to people that never got read them.
Ronnie moves back to New York and Will transfers colleges to be with her.
So those are all of his movies. So far. There are several hundred permutations left.
A Man Without Equal
"There are no authors in my genre. No one is doing what I do." - Actual quote from Nicholas Sparks. It looks like several thousand people are doing what you do.
It's like if M. Night Shyamalan started every movie with the main character being shot to death by one of the New Kids on the Block and then criticized Steven Spielberg and George Lucas for always making the same movie over and over.
Do it Yourself Nicholas Sparks Book Covers
We asked you to create your own Nicholas Sparks book cover and post it on our Facebook wall. We've selected the winner, but first the runners-up:
by. Crystal Byrd
by. Matt Conner
by. Steven Sanchez
by. Matthew Hevey
and
by. Meggie Nidever
by. Timothy Schattenjager
by. Angel Caminero
by. Ashley Carver-Holcombe
And your winner...
Congratulations to Matt Dupree.
Check out the rest of the entries here.
When I was working at a bookstore, Nicholas Sparks was our sworn nemesis. The shelves groaned with the weight of all those books, of which we may sell one or two within the course of a month, but we kept getting in new shipments of them, and had to cram them all on the shelf somehow. Nicholas Sparks may demonstrate an interesting physical anomaly; his books all occupy space while somehow not consisting of any matter.
ReplyToo bad almost the author of this article only watched the movies. Otherwise he would have had to include the actual plots and actual endings of the books which would have really been difficult to criticize since they're not romanticized by Hollywood directors.
ReplyNope. I'm sorry i'm the one to tell you but, you are wrong.
Yeah god damn hollywood, romanticizing.... uhhh... romance novels.
Everyone who makes these kind of cunts millionaires deserve to die a slow and painful death. Preferrably with much oozing involved.
Replyi remember going to see a walk to remember with my church youth group when i was a kid, i really liked the music in the movie but the rest of the movie was forgettable
ReplyYou know a story is good when it involves a church youth group.
I have title for his next book "Reconciling Cancer Parents" because f**k it, why even try naming them?
ReplyI'm a 30-year-old woman who's never read a Nicholas Sparks novel and never will, and who's only ever seen The Notebook, which I HATED. My friends have been appalled at that for years, telling me I wasn't a real woman and didn't have a heart because I wasn't a Sparks-loving sheep.
ReplyDammit, you've just given the best, most hilarious credence to my ongoing argument that his novels are dreck and should never see the light of day. Thank you for that, Cracked. THANK YOU.
A 30-yearold women named rusty on a web site which target audience consists almost entirely of 20 something yearold stoners... Something doesn't quite add up here, but I don't know what....
20 something changes to 30 something in the span of a few years, and cracked has been around for a bit now.
i must admit, i love a walk to remember (gimme a break i was a kid when it came out, it was amazing) and i must admit i love the notebook.. (what can i say im a sucker for hot males in lead roles..) beyond those two, i have not wasted my time to watch the same story redone in a new time period/with new actors/acresses. but this artile is soooo true. and it is the funniest one yet.. aside from ke$has article. in my opinion at least. both made me mess my pants as a result of continuous laughing thru the entire article. you owe me two pairs of pants.
ReplyI'm right there with you on A Walk to Remember. It was the first chick flick I watched with my girlfriend and actually got me choked up(shut up). I hadn't heard of Sparks until sometime after I saw it, so I it had some originality. She's into him(sigh...) and likes the movies, but I can't watch'em without ruining them for her. I guess if you only watch one then it could be fine, but any more and it's like watching Avatar.
This is quite honestly one of the best topic pages I have ever seen. I did not stop laughing the entire time and I had to stop after two of the summaries so that I didn't die. I also spilled boiling tea all over myself - while the mug was on the table. I'm still not sure how that's possible. All I know is that it was caused directly by this. Thank you, really.
ReplyI get teased and criticized for not having seen or read any of these and was about to cave in. Thanks for saving me what was sure to have been a slow torture. Followed by a chance to reconcile with my mother and a cancerous death.
ReplyNicholas Sparks is correct in saying that he has no contemporaries. He has superiors.
ReplyLOL. True.
holy s**t, what a douche, I hope he gets cancer and dies.
Reply Hide All See All 5 RepliesHow can you wish that on anybody?...
It's easy. I hope you get cancer and die. See?
@TaniaW37
But then he'd get his ultimate fantasy. To be in his own book.
That's a little far, but I will admit that I hope he like breaks his arm or something.
But not until he and his estranged parents (who don't approve of his relationship) reconcile.
I remember reading an interview where he called Blood Meridian "pulpy and melodramatic", then proceeded to compare himself to Shakespeare, Jane Austen, and Ernest Hemingway. The dude has his head shoved so far up his own ass he can lick his nipples from the inside.
ReplyHe is such an egotistical douche bag. His writing is on par with Twilight and yet his ego could swallow the whole earth.
ReplyIt seems to me that "The Notebook" has an edgier movie cover than the rest. Notice how Rachael McAdams is elevated above Ryan Gosling, an unorthodox position when compared to the standard set by the others. Could this be a sign of Spark's literary genius? As a feminist, Sparks deliberately choose this position to ensure that McAdams retains sexual dominance over Gosling. This significant choice of symbolism is the beginning of a new conspiracy connecting Sparks to the illuminati. Read more in Dan Brown's latest book; "The Sparks Code", available now at CVS.
ReplyNice. I see what you did...
Ditto runeaglerun...hilarious article, more, more! Btw, can't wait to see "I'll never let you go"... :D
ReplyOne small flaw in your recordings... In the movie, The Notebook, you have the story right, BUT the book is nothing like the movie. There's a sequel and they don't die!
ReplySo there is an exception.
Maybe, but they will die eventually, and you can bet your ass Nicholas Sparks will be there to write it all down
I happen to love his novels, which are way better than the movies. and life is pretty much a constant replay day after day. each person lives the basic routine. . . born, parents are the greatest people til you get into school, you become influenced by peers, you fall in love, get your heart broke a few times, face some tragic events, lose people you love, and eventually pass away your self, then depending on your beliefs. . .you start all over again. I think Nicholas makes you stop and think about the little details that may make your life more meaningful. grab onto the small stuff because otherwise its the same s**t everyday then you die.
ReplyNot everyones life follows that same formula.
Shhh... let em be ignorant, nobody tell them that there is virtually nothing stopping him from flicking everything the bird, and moving to somewhere else, Instead of doing something you hate until you die and rot away, having done nothing which made you truly happy in your life.
LOVED this! Of course I laughed so hard my stomach hurts now, but oh well... : )
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesThat's actually from the cancer.
If it IS cancer, just make sure you reconcile with your mom/dad/dog/etc. before you die. Otherwise "The Last Cancer" might not make big bucks at the box office.
Also, do what you can to write/sing/compose/paint a masterpiece before you go...
Message in a Bottle, right? And if I remember right, that one ends with a letter...
ReplySo very true (and funny).
ReplyI have recently read a book by NS, thinking it had to be something "special" to deserve such praise. Hmmmm...a predictable love story, even though I didn't predict the ending because I thought, it was TOO predictable.