THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, January 12, 1996 TAG: 9601120040
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: Jennifer Dziura
LENGTH: Medium: 68 lines
"Harry kills mice with a hammer as part of his poetry readings, but we're still pals."
This sentence was an entry in the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest in the 1980s; the object of the contest is ``to compose the worst possible opening sentence for an imaginary novel.''
Edward Bulwer-Lytton was the prolific Victorian novelist who opened ``Paul Clifford'' with the sentence ``It was a dark and stormy night.'' Later in this sorry novel, Bulwer-Lytton described a man lighting a pipe as ``applying the Promethean spark to his tube,'' and he referred to a bedroom as a ``somnambular accommodation.''
The Bulwer-Lytton Contest is open to the class mammalia. All a mammal must do is compose a profoundly bad sentence, one which makes the reader cringe in embarrassment at its very existence. The sentence should be under 50 words; entrants may submit more than one entry, but the entries should be original and unpublished.
The following (for your personal entertainment pleasure) are examples of winning and nonwinning submissions to the Bulwer-Lytton Contest.
``Yes, Cathy could ingest a full-grown rat when she was in the mood, then wash down the rodent with great quantities of diet cola (when she knew perfectly well one shouldn't mix hairy proteins and artificial sweetener).''
``Emily had always liked little John, the neighbors' kid, and he was particularly good done this way in a delicate bechamel sauce with simmered mushrooms and just a hint of garlic.''
``I suggest you stick to painting, Mr. Van Gogh - you sure don't have an ear for music.''
``Awash with unfocused desire, Everett twisted the lobe of his one remaining ear and felt the presence of somebody else behind him, which caused terror to push through his nervous system like a flash flood roaring down the mid-fork of the Feather River before the completion of the Oroville Dam in 1959.''
``Fall had come to the city; the trees had turned to yellows and the winos had turned to reds.''
``Pamela's heart beat fast and
her hands trembled a lot as she listened to the intermittent knocking on the front door of her shanty located near the railroad tracks beside a hobo jungle and she thought `That's a bum rap if I ever heard one.' ''
`` `The leg, he is fractured,' he said in broken English.''
``Like a freshly cracked egg with its yolk hanging desperately to its white precious milliseconds before breaking free and slithering with a thud to its designated container, I clung to the cliff in fear.''
``It was a nice day and cheerful Nellie busily dried the breakfast dishes in the nice kitchen.''
``With her strength failing rapidly, the dying Augusta reached for her one night stand, her breast heaving coarsely, cancer having finally overtaken her, for the gilded framed memento of her dwarfish, undersized Norwegian lover-explorer, which slipped from her grasp and fell to the mosaic tile floor, shattering as she wheezed her last regret, `Alas, Leif was too short.' ''
``It was a dark and stormy night; the rain plastered the cheap dress enticingly to the back of my legs as I bent to scrape the still-warm gum from the sidewalk.''
``To be fully appreciated, this story must be read in the nude - so, please, bare with me.'' by CNB