Nicholas Sparks has an ego with three capital Es. And some serious issues with genre.

I got the feeling that the author of this (two-week old) USAToday piece REALLY didn't like Mr. Sparks.  Some quotes:

On his predecessors:

"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."

On his favorite coming-of-age novel:

"I think A Walk to Remember," he says, citing his own novel. "That's my version of a coming-of-age." He pauses and adds: "You have to say To Kill a Mockingbird is an all-time classic."

On genre:

Asked what he likes in his own genre, Sparks replies: "There are no authors in my genre. No one is doing what I do."

On the difference between romance novels (which are all apparently the same) and love stories (which are all apparently different):

"I don't write romance novels." His preferred terminology: "Love stories — it's a very different genre. I would be rejected if I submitted any of my novels as romance novels."

"No, it's the difference between Cinderella and Romeo and Juliet," he says. "(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."

PHEW.  The article's worth reading -- especially for the not-so-subtle zingers that the interviewer threw in there.  And now I think I'll head into work and set up a Nicholas Sparks Readalikes display -- I'll fill it with Jane Austen and the Greeks and Shakespeare and Hemingway.  Nothing contemporary, though.  Because no one's doing what he's doing -- especially not James Patterson.  (And I can't put any Nicholas Sparks books in, because it's a display of readalikes, see?)