arts & entertainment
A NovA by th.
Ya
Bestselling Author
NICHOLAS
SPARKS
The Longest Ride
It's Beshert!
A New York Times bestseller, The Longest Ride, features
popular fiction author Nicholas Sparks' first Jewish characters.
Curt Schleier
I Special to the Jewish News
N
icholas Sparks' novels — The
Notebook, Message in a Bottle, A
Walk to Remember — all rocket
to the top of bestseller lists. And most of
them become popular movies,
too. His latest, The Longest Ride
(Grand Central Publishing),
published earlier this fall, fol-
lows in that tradition. The film
version is scheduled for release
on Valentine's Day 2015.
But there's a significant dif-
ference with this novel. One of
the two couples, comprising
two of the four central char-
acters, is Jewish — the first in
any of Sparks' books.
The plot is as follows:
Ninety-one-year-old Ira Levinson is trapped
in his car, which has skidded down an
embankment invisible from the road. He
doesn't know when or if he will be rescued.
In his delirium, he has a conversation with
his wife Ruth, who died nine years earlier,
looking back on their life together.
They met when she was 16, shortly after
she arrived in the States. Ruth and her
mom walked into the Levinsons' store, and
it was kismet.
They share something with the charac-
ters in all of Sparks' books: a kind of fairy-
tale love and happiness — their marriage
beshert, meant to be.
Their love ultimately impacts the rela-
tionship of the two other principal char-
acters: Sophia, a senior art major at Wake
Forest University in North Carolina, and
Luke, a rancher and professional bull rider.
Sparks contrasts the Levinsons' love at the
end of life with the budding romance of
the young couple.
Sparks spoke to the Detroit Jewish News
about his book, the Jewish characters and
his own Jewish connections.
JN: Would it be inaccurate to
call you a romance writer?
NS: Yes. It's an inaccurate
term to describe my work.
Romance novelists have a specif-
ic structure and very strict rules
they follow. My books don't fall
into what romance novels are.
Family dramas, Southern litera-
ture, love stories — all are terms
that are more accurate.
JN: It wasn't meant in a pejora-
tive way. Certainly your books are full of
romance.
NS: Romantic elements are part of my
books. But I write novels that cover a lot
of different emotions; and my goal really
as a writer is to accurately reflect all of
those emotions — happiness, fear, loss and
betrayal. I want to make all of these emo-
tions come to life so that the reader feels he
knows all of these characters.
JN: Are you familiar with the word
beshert? It means pre-destined. Do you
believe in that outside of novels?
NS: I think romance is alive and well. I
think that feeling is a universal human expe-
rience. When you meet the person you are
meant to be with, there's this overwhelming
feeling that "this was preordained:'
I can tell you that from my own experi-
ence. I met my wife on spring break in
Florida. I was down with my friends, and I
saw her walking through a parking lot. If we
had stopped for even one more red light, we
never would have met. Is that preordained?
JN: The Levinsons are your first Jewish
characters. How did that come about?
NS: It was something I hadn't done before,
and I thought people would like it. Also, not
a lot of people know there are Jewish people
in the South. We all know there are a lot of
Jewish people in New York and other big cit-
ies. Not a lot of people realize how prominent
they are in the history of the South. New
Bern, [where I live], is the home of the
first synagogue in North Carolina.
JN: Did you do a lot of research?
NS: Of course. I wanted to get the wed-
ding right. Growing up, I attended three or
four bar mitzvahs, but strangely I've never
been to a Jewish wedding. The real chal-
lenge was finding out [how weddings were
conducted] in the 1940s as opposed to
today. I wanted to get the history right.
I've always read a lot of history, and
World War II is one of my favorite periods
of study. I certainly consider myself fairly
well-read on the Holocaust.
We started the [Epiphany] school here
in my hometown. The basis of it is love in
the Christian tradition, and what we mean
by that is you shall love God and your
neighbor as yourself, which comes from
Leviticus and the Gospel.
Our [high school] sophomores read
The Diary of Anne Frank and Night by
Elie Wiesel. We fly them to Poland, and
The lives of two couples who have
little in common and are separated
by years and experience converge
with unexpected poignancy.
they visit the Krakow Jewish quarter and
Schindler's factory and Auschwitz. It's an
independent school in the Judeo-Christian
tradition. The school's headmaster, Saul
Benjamin, is Jewish.
JN: Did you base your characters on
anyone?
NS: My grandmother got divorced and
moved to San Diego, where she became
friendly with a Jewish man who was
almost like my grandfather from the time
I was 8 almost through college. They went
to Israel together.
We didn't have a lot of money so
we'd vacation in San Diego and stay at
Grandma's house. I became very close to
him. He taught me how to snorkel. He
taught me how to body-surf and was very
much part and parcel of my life.
Ira was modeled on him, probably less
in the religious aspect than the generation-
al aspect. He was born in 1920 as was Ira.
JN: What's been the reaction to Ira
and Ruth?
NS: My attorney, who is Jewish, told me,
"My gosh, you wrote my parents:' That
was a wonderful feeling that I really got
this right.
❑
Jews
Nate Bloom
Special to the Jewish News
Bar Mitzvah Boy
w12 Vanessa Bayer, 32, joined Saturday
Night Live four years ago. She's
CU
emerged as a stand-out cast member
with dead-on impressions of Miley
Cyrus and Hillary Clinton, as well as
(i) funny characters she has created, like
Jacob the bar mitzvah boy.
She recently spoke to Rolling Stone
magazine about the
creation of Jacob:
"The town I grew
up in (a Cleveland
suburb) was at least
50 percent Jewish,
so every weekend in
the seventh grade,
Bayer
we went to bar and
W
50 December 5 • 2013
JN
bat mitzvahs. It's based on that.
"A lot of my brother's friends who
have seen [Jacob] think that the ges-
tures I make are based on my brother,
which is pretty funny and might be
true. When I started doing standup in
college, I just started doing that char-
acter. My first year on the show, one
of the writers wrote me into a sketch
where I played a bar mitzvah boy; and
I got to do it, which was so cool.
"But the whole thing started in my
standup. I felt like I had seen that boy
so much, and it's so fun to play that
little awkward boy who likes to tell
dad-style jokes."
Litecycles
It was recently revealed that actor
Adam Brody (The 0.C.), 33, and
actress-singer Leighton Meister (Gossip
Girl), 27, are engaged.
The couple met while
filming the indie film
The Oranges in 2011.
Ironically, Meister,
who isn't Jewish,
played a Jew in the
film while Brody
played her non-Jewish
neighbor. Brody's par-
ents both grew up in the Detroit area
and, in 2006, Brody co-starred In the
Land of Women, which was mostly set
in Michigan and filmed here.
It also was confirmed that actress
Ginnifer Goodwin, 35, and her fiance,
actor Josh Dallas, 31, are expecting
a child. The two met when they were
cast as the co-stars of Once Upon
a Time, the ABC fantasy series (she
plays Snow White, and Dallas plays
Prince Charming).
Last May, Goodwin reaffirmed her
commitment to Judaism before her
hometown synagogue and stated
that her then-boyfriend (Dallas) was
fine with their home being a "Jewish
home."
Courageous Women
The Battle of AMFAR premieres
on HBO at 9 p.m. Monday, Dec. 9.
Directed by Oscar-winning documen-
tary filmmakers Rob Epstein, 58, and
Jeffrey Friedman, 62, the short film
focuses on the dire early days of the
AIDS crisis and the moment in 1985
when Dr. Mathilde Krim, now 87, and
actress Elizabeth Taylor launched
AMFAR, the country's first AIDS
research foundation. Krim, like Taylor,
is a convert to Judaism. E