May 19, 2011
A Walk to Remember with Nicholas Sparks through a Bookstore
What does Nicholas Sparks think of Cormac McCarthy?
“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.”
Cormac McCarthy? “Horrible,” he says, looking at Blood Meridian. “This is probably the most pulpy, overwrought, melodramatic cowboy vs. Indians story ever written.”
Even hearing a passage about a sunset in which “the mountains in their blue islands stood footless in the void like floating temples” doesn’t sway him.
I don’t know which part of this I like best.
(thanks, Luke)
comments
Leave a Reply
Quick, Amae. Interview me and ask what I think of Nicholas Sparks.
Nicholas Sparks and Thomas Kinkade. Birds of a feather.
I don’t know where to start. Nicholas Sparks writes for people who don’t actually read.
It’s one thing to be a hack. I can respect hacks, if for no other reason than because they work.
But to be a hack with pretensions to literary greatness? That is an unforgivable sin.
Let’s see . . . how many hardcover Cormac McCarthy books are in the bargain section? I can go into any bookstore and find a Sparks novel (possibly an early printing) for less than five bucks. What a narcissistic dweeb!
Pretentious hacks. Yep. It’s why I thought of Thomas Kinkade. I remember Michael Smith telling us how Kinkade once approached his (Michael’s) mother on the beach, as she was working, and offered her the possibility of work in his maquilladora as though it were a grand opportunity.
True confession: I am not a huge McCarthy devotee. And I admire various pulp writers. But I ain’t listening to criticism of Cormac McCarthy from Nicholas Sparks.
I had to look that one up.
It was from the time Daryl was measuring poop.
One of the times, at least.
I’ve never thought to read any Sparks and now I never ever will.
To be honest, I’m not sure I knew who he was.
I’d heard the name before, but I wouldn’t have been able to tell you what he was famous for, or whether he was nonfictional.
I always mix him up with James Frey. Not sure why.
I’m not sure whether I was mixing him up with Nicholas Nickleby or Hal Sparks.
Idea for a Nicolas Sparks Novel:
A man falls in love with a woman who lives in a cottage in a Thomas Kinkade painting.
They can’t be together because one of them is in a painting.
The man finds Kinkade and convinces him to paint him into the painting.
Kindade won’t do it.
The man almost meets Kincade’s assistant in the shop; she is the girl in the painting.
The end.
I went looking on google for Thomas Kinkade paintings that contained recognizable people (i.e. more than a tiny speck, or the back of someone’s head) and couldn’t find any.
maybe he paints her out of the painting at the end.
a tragedy.
Or maybe he kills her.
I don’t think Nicolar Sparks writes murders.
Could be wrong.
Also, damn you and your fact finding mission to destory my multi-million dollar Nicolas Sparks/Thomas Kinkade movie idea. People would buy that crap.
You all have seen this, right?
Ok, new movie idea, man falls in love with a hazy, sun-dappled, snow-capped victorian cottage.
And they can’t be together because one of them is a hazy, sun-dappled, snow-capped victorian cottage.
Joel, I figure this is worth a couple of million each.
Have your people talk to my people.
Sheila: My wife and her sisters refer to Kinkade exclusively as Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light, Register Trademark.
My wife doesn’t refer to Thomas Kinkade, ever.
Joel, field trip?
Jamie, you would have fallen over laughing if you had heard me and Deron riffing on Painter of _____ as we cleared out the detritus from my late mother’s house. (I’d found a horrid Kinkade punch bowl that my mother hated, a gift from a niece. “What AM I going to do with this thing?” she once asked me.)
It started with my recollection of an artist friend who jokingly styled himself “Painter of Sub-Atomic Particles” and took off from there. I wish I could remember where it went.
But we forgot the “registered trademark” bit.
Painter of paint.
Painter of the Las Vegas of the Disaffected Employees of Walmart.
Painter of the Little Blemish toward the Anal End of Your Taint.
Painter of the Sickness unto Death.
Painter of the things that would most deeply, really fulfill you.
Painter of the Invisible Sacrament of the Familial Occult.
Painter of the Twilight of the Idols.
Painter of Twilight slash fiction
Painter of the Arrow of Time in the Quantum Universe.
Painter of Ontogeny Recapitulating Phylogeny.
Painter of Irreversible Trends in Mesoamerican Psychic Anthropology.
Painter of Alternative Valuation Methods for Swaptions.
Painter of Butts.
Painter of the line of dirt that is always left in front of the dust pan when you sweep the floor.
Painter of Midges.
Painter of ennui
Painter of Post-Nasal Drip.
Painter of things we can’t believe are not butter
Painter of that clicking sound you sometimes get at the back of your throat.
Painter of the House on the Rock.
Painter of paintings displayed at the House on the Rock
I saw The House on the Rock before it became the circus it is now. Pristine archecture, once. At one with its surroundings. How. How, did I know this at the age of 10 or 11?
It’s no longer about the house. It’s about the attractions.
Godammit, it makes me sad.
Painter of Little Pants.
Painter of canvas.
Painter of Silent but Deadly.
I saw The House on the Rock about five years ago, before my head was filled with treatment plans for various psychopathologies. Mostly I just remember feeling like here’s a guy who figured out how to make tourists come and spend their monies to sate curiosity and goddamnit he swindled me too. I think I would’ve enjoyed your take, Rick. I would’ve appreciated the architecture more, like you, if it weren’t for the hoarder-style knickknacks and electrified taxidermied cat.
If I were to return now, I’d be overly concerned with how to empathize with a person like that, which would make the whole smarmy bastard bit so much more troubling.
Painter of Bristol Scale rated paintings.
Painter of Hoarder-Style Knickknacks and Electrified Taxidermied Cats.
Painter of WJIF.
Painter of Jesus Enters You.
Painter of grapefruit.
Painter of Thank You.
I’m still trying to figure out what WJIF stands for. Who Jesus Is Fucking? WWJF makes more sense to me.
So… I’m not the only one?
Yeah. WWJF would have been better, I almost changed it. But I meant it to mean What Is Jeaus Fucking.
What Jesus Is…
Painter of Michael’s poorly worded comments.
Painter of confusing anagrams
Painter if 600 pounds of men.
Painter of CVS Brand Products.
Painter of of.
painter of maple-sage
painter of spew
Painter of the definition of the word is.
Painter of Hemingway reading one of Sparky’s novels, shitting in it, and slamming it shut. All done kind of Nude Descending a Staircase.
Painter of a woman that’s a little plump Scotch girl.
Painter of the girl from Ipanema. Painter of Mrs. Miller.
Painter of the Exploding Plastic Inevitable.
Didn’t Dan Brown pull the same shit with Hemingway? What’s up with shitty writers and comparing themselves to him? I think Brown and Sparks should have a love affair in the Swiss Alps and write a book about that.
I’ve read a Nicholas Sparks book. Because it was funny. And I was trapped in a cabin and had read everything else.
clusterflock book club.