The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, famed far and wide for its contribution to awful literature, has published the results of this year's debacle. The goal was to produce the single worst opening sentence possible, for an imaginary and awful novel. The winner was Dan McKay of Fargo, ND, with:
quote:As he stared at her ample bosom, he daydreamed of the dual Stromberg carburetors in his vintage Triumph Spitfire, highly functional yet pleasingly formed, perched prominently on top of the intake manifold, aching for experienced hands, the small knurled caps of the oil dampeners begging to be inspected and adjusted as described in chapter seven of the shop manual.
Congratulations, all you sickos out there. But, now that it's over, there's nothing to stop me from inflicting my own entries on you, the helpless reader. Here's what I sent in:
***
After ransacking the castle and searching through all the boxes in the attic, all the beakers and jars in the lab, all the chained crates in the dungeons, and all the pits in the nearby moors, Dr. Vitkoristein slumped in his chair next to Sandra's vivsected body and finally admitted to himself that he'd lost her heart.
***
It came to Brian, as he ran through the alleyways clutching his bleeding shoulder and ducking bullets, that if he ever got the urge again to shoot a man in Reno just to watch him die, he'd better practice his aim first.
***
"Your hat is lovely ma'am, perfectly lovely," Wentworth decided to say, watching his mistress preen in front of her mirror as he fought to ignore the bloody, scattered bodies of the last six of ma'am's servants who chose incorrectly.
***
It turned out, to Billy's great disappointment and pain, that it is really isn't that easy to change your sexual orientation, even with pliers.
***
Inflamed with passion, Simon bit gently into her neck as he slowly slid his hand between them to lightly caress her... and here he paused, for using medical terms was too clinical for this delightful task while the crude euphemisms of his youth failed to embrace the passion he felt, and finally he decided with a smile to think of her secret places as just that, places that needed no name because no other voyager but he would ever need to name such lovelies, although by now they were no longer under his hand as she had gotten bored and wandered off to watch television.
***
"I'm breaking up with you," came the tearful voice throgh his earphones of his iPod, as he listened to Marsha's ingenius method of getting the point across to the man she accused of never listening to her, although he put the lie to that by thoughtfully setting her anguished breakup MP3 on "replay."
***
Though mere inches of water separated Michael from his once and eternal love, it was the memory of her accusatory tone and spiteful attitude that kept him from reaching across that tiny distance and pulling her above the surface.
***
Years of experience still had not yet taught Dr. Jenkins to look down before absent-mindedly grabbing another bite of his lunch in the morgue, but repetition had imprinted upon him the vital necessity of a good, strong mustard.
And here are the entries I wrote for my column about the contest, which then became ineligible to enter since they had thus been previously published. Darn these infernal restrictions!
Captain Magnificent stood exhausted amidst the crumpled results of his mighty labors and reflected, as the screaming crowds rushed towards him, that maybe "compact cars" wasn’t really a command after all.
***
She walked through my door like a blonde bombshell -- tight-fitting dress, stiletto heels, and all -- and I marveled at the way she could smash through a thick wooden door with a glass window and brass fittings and still lie there so cool and calculating in a widening pool of her own devilishly sexy blood.
***
The sun beat down mercilessly, relentlessly, like a manic ex-girlfriend who disregarded restraining orders to sneak past police protection and slash my tires, brutalize my cat, and threaten my kids, although the ex-girlfriend probably couldn’t give me a nasty sunburn on my nose, which is why the sun was so much worse.
***
The summer breeze whipped playfully through my hair, which was strewn across the country far and wide, clogging up drains, aggravating allergies, blocking traffic, and in short doing everything it could think of except for staying on my head where it belonged before my tragic 'summer breeze' incident.
***
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.
***
"You’re killing me, Hubert, killing me," she cried as the knife struck home, taking one last chance to remind me in that annoying way she had of telling me things I already knew, and, incidentally, remind me why I bought the knife.
Posts: 7790 | Registered: Aug 2000
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quote:Originally posted by Chris Bridges: It came to Brian, as he ran through the alleyways clutching his bleeding shoulder and ducking bullets, that if he ever got the urge again to shoot a man in Reno just to watch him die, he'd better practice his aim first.
I actually like this one... may I borrow it?
Posts: 3846 | Registered: Apr 2004
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posted
Chris, most of yours just aren't bad enough. They're dang funny, but they're still too well-composed. I don't think you've nailed the genre yet. Posts: 5957 | Registered: Oct 2001
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posted
Why are we still making fun of Bulwer-Lytton? He was a widely read and respected writer of his time; he was simply an easy target for the Modernists to make fun of. But the Modernists have their own wretched excesses, too. If we lived in a rational universe, it would be Finnegan's Wake that we made fun of. Talk about wretched excess!
Posts: 2005 | Registered: Jul 1999
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Mostly, I think, because the cartoon Peanuts spent decades making Bulwer-Lytton's opening sentence to "Paul Clifford" the very definition of bad writing. The sentence runs: "It was a dark and stormy night and 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."
The author's actual quality is immaterial when held against many years of beagle-based mockery. However, he also gave us "the pen is mightier than the sword," the phrase "pursuit of the almighty dollar." He's well worth looking into.
But I would wager that few people make fun of Bulwer-Lytton because of his actual writing, or at least not past that one line. They only know what Snoopy taught them.
Posts: 7790 | Registered: Aug 2000
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posted
It's also worth noting that, as with those "Worst Song" and/or "Worst Politician" polls out there, you need to be good enough to achieve enough popularity to be disliked by a lot of people; the truly, truly terrible are never bad enough to make the list.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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He'd trump this year's winner, at least by my lights.
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