The pol­i­tics of long­ing in the cin­e­ma of Nicholas Sparks

In a 2016 inter­view with Time Mag­a­zine, author Nicholas Sparks dis­cussed the appeal of his writ­ing, fill­ing out the gaps in his ded­i­cat­ed demo­graph­ic: ​“My daugh­ter, she says the same thing as some of my read­ers: ​‘You have ruined men for me for­ev­er, because they’re just not roman­tic like this, Dad.’” It is a strange­ly tone-deaf boast, bur­dened by a stun­ning lack of self-aware­ness. But that quote is also the key to unlock­ing Sparks’ lit­er­ary ambi­tion; tap­ping into his irre­press­ible desire to offer read­ers (and even­tu­al­ly view­ers with his onscreen adap­ta­tions) an alter­na­tive, semi-fan­tas­ti­cal idea of love – one as far removed from day-to-day life as a fan­ta­sy realm or a sci-fi epic.

In such a pur­suit, Nicholas Sparks has curat­ed a bland, if reli­able, recipe for romance-writ­ing suc­cess, but his ori­gins were thor­ough­ly unex­pect­ed. He attend­ed the Uni­ver­si­ty of Notre Dame on a track and field schol­ar­ship where he stud­ied busi­ness finance, before writ­ing his break­through nov­el, The Note­book, in a new-par­ent­hood haze. It is loose­ly based on his wife’s grand­par­ents’ tumul­tuous dynam­ic and was instant­ly pop­u­lar with read­ers, launch­ing a career that would see each sub­se­quent nov­el cement­ed on the New York Times best­sellers list. Sparks is one of the only reli­ably lucra­tive facets of con­tem­po­rary lit­er­ary cul­ture, sus­tained by his rig­or­ous sched­ule he broke down in an inter­view for Cliff­s­Notes: ​“I write 2,000 words a day, three to four days per week, usu­al­ly between the hours of 10:00 a.m. and 3:30 p.m…At this pace, I fin­ish a nov­el in four to five months, and the edit­ing process is usu­al­ly straightforward.”

Such dis­ci­pline offers a unique angle to approach the author’s clin­i­cal results, with each sto­ry only sep­a­rat­ed from its pre­de­ces­sors by paper-thin cir­cum­stances, like episodes of a long-run­ning soap opera. And like a soap opera, direc­tors of each filmed adap­ta­tion are tasked with main­tain­ing an over­lit visu­al reg­u­lar­i­ty, rely­ing on a set num­ber of tropes and min­imis­ing any changes. Fit­ting­ly (con­sid­er­ing his uni­ver­si­ty major), it is an incred­i­bly busi­ness-mind­ed approach to mak­ing art, one that seeks to hold onto a core demo­graph­ic – teenagers and mid­dle-aged women – at the risk of hav­ing noth­ing to say.

Every ver­sion of this sto­ry is con­fined to a small, often fic­tion­al cor­ner of North Car­oli­na, where a rotat­ing cast of replic­a­ble side char­ac­ters orbit one man and one woman. The mechan­ics of falling in love then vary based on a few fac­tors: the age of said cou­ple, the era the sto­ry is locked in, the inher­ent tragedy of the couple’s con­clu­sion and (most cru­cial­ly) the degree to which reli­gion will influ­ence the direc­tion of their love. But what’s tru­ly fas­ci­nat­ing is even when these dif­fer­ences alter the facts of the sto­ry, the results are often smoothed into a sim­i­lar fric­tion­less shape.

Ron­nie (Miley Cyrus) and Will (Liam Hemsworth) are a young cou­ple on the precipice of col­lege in The Last Song while Katie (Julianne Hough) is on the run from her abu­sive hus­band before falling for the wid­owed Alex (Josh Duhamel) in Safe Haven, but the impact they leave on the view­er is marked­ly sim­i­lar, for they are all beau­ti­ful peo­ple with per­fect teeth who stand out against the malaise of small-town folk through har­bour­ing some kind of trau­mat­ic past. Will hilar­i­ous­ly, inad­ver­tent­ly sum­marised every Sparks’ dynam­ic, after his first kiss with the faux edgy, ripped jeans-clad Ron­nie: ​“You’re not like the oth­er girls.”

Love can be a fas­ci­nat­ing force to observe through film – it is alive, con­stant­ly incor­po­rat­ing the full­ness of its sub­jects, and yet some­times not flex­i­ble enough to expand at the same rate as the peo­ple with­in. It is unbe­com­ing and loud and qui­et­ly creep­ing in at the mar­gins. But through Sparks’ lens, it becomes a sin­gu­lar, trans­fer­able event, uni­fy­ing all his char­ac­ters across the same event. The incit­ing event is always a con­fes­sion prompt­ing a sim­i­lar­ly inti­mate dec­la­ra­tion from their sig­nif­i­cant other.

In The Last Song, when Will admits that his broth­er died in a car acci­dent, Ron­nie responds by demon­strat­ing her skill as a pianist (not real­ly a fair exchange in my opin­ion). In A Walk to Remem­ber, Jamie (Mandy Moore) describes her buck­et list to Lan­don (Shane West) and he, in turn, explains the com­plex dynam­ic he has with his father. Knowl­edge and under­stand­ing bind Sparks cou­ples togeth­er in the most obvi­ous way. Each step towards one anoth­er is expressed in its crud­est form, ren­der­ing a trans­ac­tion­al exchange of goods through the author’s cap­i­tal­is­tic lens.

Cou­ples are proven wor­thy of such Sparks-ian affec­tion by how they over­come the tragedy which strikes mid­way through. If they are young, said tragedy is like­ly to strike at the edge of the sto­ry, to a sec­ondary char­ac­ter (as in The Longest Ride, Dear John and The Best of Me), but if they are mid­dle-aged, the tragedy strikes one of our pro­tag­o­nists down with a blunt, ugly force (as in Nights in Rodan­the, Mes­sage in a Bottle…and some­how also The Best of Me). Death is man­u­fac­tured to raise the stakes of an oth­er­wise weight­less sto­ry while also embody­ing a brand of unim­peach­able loy­al­ty. In this lit­er­ary world, women are wait­ing to be saved from sin­gle moth­er­hood, abu­sive mar­riages or just being good at their jobs. The men who save them are jocks with a gen­tle­man­ly demeanour. This appeals to the low­est com­mon denom­i­na­tor of man­u­fac­tured female desire, reach­ing for that ide­alised response: ​“You have ruined men for me forever.”

Love in this form is a step-by-step rou­tine, an inevitable lock­ing togeth­er of two pur­pose-built puz­zle pieces. All of this is rem­i­nis­cent of the Chris­t­ian sto­ry, which imag­ines peo­ple to be con­struct­ed as recip­i­ents of God’s love. In this way, Sparks’ love sto­ries are only com­pre­hen­si­ble as a belief sys­tem, forc­ing every new rela­tion­ship to be approached with a qua­si-reli­gious inten­si­ty, appro­pri­ate for a once devout Catholic like Sparks. In dis­cussing the specifics of Will and Ronnie’s love sto­ry with Catholic Exchange he combs through the doc­trine of their mutu­al desire: ​“He sees the way she treats the tur­tles, and he knows that she doesn’t drink. He sees the good things in her that say, ​‘Wow – this is a good per­son!’” Such specifics in attrac­tion are not innocu­ous expres­sions of good man­ners, but proof of some­thing dark­er and grotesque – some­thing innate­ly ​“Amer­i­can”.

There is no room for hap­py iso­la­tion in Sparks’ world; cou­ples are either togeth­er, and die with the knowl­edge that they have found their soul­mate, or they are apart unhap­pi­ly. Ronnie’s innate good­ness is only mean­ing­ful in as much as it is per­ceived by Will, with their rela­tion­ship acti­vat­ing a near 180-degree shift in her per­son­al­i­ty. In defter sto­ry­telling hands this could be a thought­ful dynam­ic to explore, plat­form­ing love as a shape-shift­ing force, capa­ble of reimag­in­ing someone’s whole being, but through Sparks’ lens, it becomes a way of express­ing a reduc­tive view of being. All of his char­ac­ters are halves of a tra­di­tion­al whole – sleep­er agents wait­ing to be acti­vat­ed out of the cir­cum­stances of their lives. They are all Eves formed from and for their respec­tive Adams.

None of Sparks’ lit­er­ary out­puts have infil­trat­ed cul­tur­al con­ver­sa­tions like The Note­book did, and arguably the rest of his work has been chas­ing that first, inde­fin­able high. But in such a pur­suit, he has unwit­ting­ly craft­ed a canon of love sto­ries that will stand as a strange, stunt­ed homage to a gen­er­a­tion of women yearn­ing for the kind of man that didn’t (and shouldn’t) exist.