“Don’t sling shit and call it a mud bath”

One of my most awesome readers, H. E. Ellis, wrote a guest post. Check it out! And check him out!

“So for my guest post I thought we’d play a game. Below is a list of quotes. Contestant (A) is our reigning champion Nicholas Sparks! Today I’ve pitted him up against a Mystery Contestant (?) spelled backward at the bottom of this post.

 

So now let’s play…Dueling Douche bags!

 

(A) “A WALK TO REMEMBER is set in the late 1950’s because that was the last really innocent period in schools.”

(?) “I was a beatnik in the ’50s before the hippies came along.”

 

(A) “If I wasn’t doing this, I have no idea what I’d be doing.”

(?) “I’d probably try to stop the rain forests from being cut down. I’d probably join the revolution down south somewhere and try to save my life on the planet Earth.”

 

(A) “In all love stories the theme is love and tragedy, so by writing these types of stories, I have to include tragedy.”

(?) “It’s a comedy-tragedy, an opera that was played in the early morning.”

 

(A) “I don’t write fantasy, I write reality. Also, my novels have roots to Greek tragedies and as such, there has to be tragedy.”

(?) “Is the truth fun?”

 

(A) “I have seldom been described as shy.”

(?) “Most insecure people need attention. I don’t.”

 

(A) “F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and William Faulkner have fewer published novels combined than any number of contemporary novelists-Roberts, King, Koontz, Steel, etc.”

(?) “I’m not of this generation.”

 

(A) “What’s the challenge in writing a novel that few people will read? I’m more than happy writing what I do and have no plans to change that.”

(?) “Over a period of about 20 years, I would imagine you’d want to change something.”

 

It’s this last statement by Sparks that really struck a nerve with me. He has, unbeknownst to himself, just defined why he is regarded as a commercial novelist and not the literary genius he’d like the world to believe he is. What separates his work from what appears monthly in Playboy or Hustler? How hard is it to pump a primed well? There’s no shame in writing commercial fiction but for God’s sake OWN UP TO IT. Don’t sling shit and call it a mud bath.

 

Everything I love about literature–true literature, flies in the face of this statement. It’s not meant to reflect what we already know to be true of ourselves, it’s meant to lift us up to places we’ve never been and expose us to worlds and ideas and opinions broader and grander than the scope of our own backyards. It’s meant to FILL our dry wells. It’s why THE NOTEBOOK is commercial romance and why LOLITA is a true love story (tragedy and all). Every time I think I’ve churned out a staggering work of genius I re-read the first five hundred words of LOLITA and reopen my doc. file.

 

Embracing the challenge of writing a novel that few people will read is EXACTLY why I became a writer.

 

***The Mystery Contestant is: NOSNAM SELRAHC

 

http://www.charlesmansonfanclub.com/QUOTES.htm

http://www.great-quotes.com/quotes/author/Nicholas/Sparks”

Literature Police’s note: the following YouTube video is what you should play as background music while you re-read the post. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Di7CUECvn0s