
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, August 1, 1993                   TAG: 9308010138
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: OXFORD, MISS.                                LENGTH: Short

FAUX FAULKNER TO WORST VERSE

A literary masterpiece it isn't, but it sure sounds like one.

"Through the cards, between the curling fingers, I could see them bidding. Hasten bid, then Can't-ace bid. They looked at me. I looked at mine and began to cry. I passed," Peter Stoicheff begins his "Astoundin' the Tourney."

Stoicheff, 36, offered his story about a dysfunctional family playing bridge to win the fourth annual best bad William Faulkner contest. His story is a parody of "The Sound and the Fury."

Stoicheff, a Canadian professor of English at the University of Saskatchewan, competed against more than 750 entrants from 10 countries.

Stoicheff was to read his 500-word spoof today from the porch of Rowan Oak, where Faulkner lived until his death in 1962.

The event is part of the University of Mississippi's Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference celebrating the somber Nobel laureate who made art out of the streaming Southern consciousness.

Second place went to Bruce Jacobs of Baltimore for a parody of "The Bear," broken only by commas, colons and semicolons.

Theresa Towner of Dallas came in third with "As I Stay Drinking," inspired by "As I Lay Dying."

Typewritten, 500-word entries for the fifth "Faux Faulkner" contest can be mailed to The Faulkner Newsletter, P.O. Box 248, Oxford, Miss. 38655.

by CNB