It was a bright and sunny afternoon, which was pestering me like a relentless mosquito that simply won't go away even after you've helpfully pointed towards neighboring people with far more blood to spare, because I was trying to commit something terrible on my keyboard and the beautiful day was allowing a degree of heretofore unsuspected quality to creep in, a literary device that would surely get me disqualified from the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest faster than an Olympic runner with roller skate implants.
This contest, started by Scott Rice in 1982 and sponsored by the English Department at San Jose State University, celebrates the glorious wonder of truly awful writing. "Bulwer-Lytton" is a nod towards the Victorian writer Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, who penned, among other things, this immortal book-killer from Paul Clifford in 1830:
"It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents--except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."
[ April 06, 2005, 08:00 AM: Message edited by: Chris Bridges ]
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The problem, something I realized midway through writing this, is that by publishing this column I've ruined those suggestions for entry. Entries have to be previously unpublished. Sigh.
Fortunately I have faith in my bad writing abilities to come up with more...
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Look at it this way, sometimes it takes serious talent to perform badly (singing, acting, etc.), so if you can come up with that many terrifyingly bad examples, you are really that good. Posts: 226 | Registered: Mar 2005
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quote: "As the sounds of the first truck backing into his driveway mixed with the cries of a million billion screaming, tortured souls howling to be free, Vince began to feel buyer's remorse over what he had up until now considered a pretty shrewd eBay purchase."
That sentence would be right at home in a Terry Pratchett novel.
quote: "'You're killing me, Hubert, killing me,' she cried as the knife struck home, taking one last chance to remind me in that annoying, whiny way she always had of telling me things I already knew, and, incidentally, remind me why I bought the knife."
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