Yesterday the English Department at San Jose State University announced the results of the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, a "whimsical literary competition that challenges entrants to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels."
I've often claimed that I hope to win this competition before I die, but I don't think that's likely--partly because I'm too lazy to enter a submission and partly because the entries I find most amusing never win.
Update: I've had a little more time to look over the results, and I think I have a clearer idea of why I'm rarely as amused by the winning entry as the contest organizers were; many entries, I'd argue, fall short for two main reasons. First, too many entries are structurally similar. Why are there so many strained similes, silly metaphors, and complicated clauses? Don't sentences like this feel really repetitive? Second, most of these sentences just don't seem plausible to me. Many of these sentences seem so silly and convoluted that I can't imagine their authors actually going on to write a complete paragraph--much less a complete novel.
Here was one of my favorite entries, for example:
Keith's popularity as the first openly gay daredevil was rising quickly; in fact, it was said he ate danger for breakfast, followed by a light brunch of lemon scones, quiche, and the occasional Mimosa, and then he was back to eating danger.
The notion that they would no longer be a couple dashed Helen's hopes and scrambled her thoughts not unlike the time her sleeve caught the edge of the open egg carton and the contents hit the floor like fragile things hitting cold tiles, more pitiable because they were the expensive organic brown eggs from free-range chickens, and one of them clearly had double yolks entwined in one sac just the way Helen and Richard used to be.
Posted by Ed at July 20, 2004 11:57 AM
God made the integers; all else is the work of Man.
-- Kronecker
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-- Kronecker
Another greeting card category consists of those persons who send out
photographs of their families every year. In the same mail that brought the
greetings from Marcia and Philip, my friend found such a conversation piece.
"My God, Lida is enormous!" she exclaimed. I don't know why women want to
record each year, for two or three hundred people to see, the ravages wrought
upon them, their mates, and their progeny by the artillery of time, but
between five and seven per cent of Christmas cards, at a rough estimate, are
family groups, and even the most charitable recipient studies them for little
signs of dissolution or derangement. Nothing cheers a woman more, I am afraid,
than the proof that another woman is letting herself go, or has lost control
of her figure, or is clearly driving her husband crazy, or is obviously
drinking more than is good for her, or still doesn't know what to wear.
Middle-aged husbands in such photographs are often described as looking
"young enough to be her son," but they don't always escape so easily, and a
couple opening envelopes in the season of mercy and good will sometimes handle
a male friend or acquaintance rather sharply. "Good Lord!" the wife will say.
"Frank looks like a sex-crazed shotgun slayer, doesn't he?" "Not to me," the
husband may reply. "to me he looks more like a Wilkes-Barre dentist who is
being sought by the police in connection with the disappearance of a choir
singer."
-- James Thurber, "Merry Christmas"
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generic viagra cheap viagra onlineAnother greeting card category consists of those persons who send out
photographs of their families every year. In the same mail that brought the
greetings from Marcia and Philip, my friend found such a conversation piece.
"My God, Lida is enormous!" she exclaimed. I don't know why women want to
record each year, for two or three hundred people to see, the ravages wrought
upon them, their mates, and their progeny by the artillery of time, but
between five and seven per cent of Christmas cards, at a rough estimate, are
family groups, and even the most charitable recipient studies them for little
signs of dissolution or derangement. Nothing cheers a woman more, I am afraid,
than the proof that another woman is letting herself go, or has lost control
of her figure, or is clearly driving her husband crazy, or is obviously
drinking more than is good for her, or still doesn't know what to wear.
Middle-aged husbands in such photographs are often described as looking
"young enough to be her son," but they don't always escape so easily, and a
couple opening envelopes in the season of mercy and good will sometimes handle
a male friend or acquaintance rather sharply. "Good Lord!" the wife will say.
"Frank looks like a sex-crazed shotgun slayer, doesn't he?" "Not to me," the
husband may reply. "to me he looks more like a Wilkes-Barre dentist who is
being sought by the police in connection with the disappearance of a choir
singer."
-- James Thurber, "Merry Christmas"
The mature bohemian is one whose woman works full time.
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Bart Simpson on chalkboard in episode 7F03
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