"It Was a Dark and Stormy Night..."

[furrbear]

The 26th annual Bulwer-Lytton contest winner was announced this week.  Just what type of contest is it?

The Bulwer-Lytton, in fact, rewards the most wretched, the most inept, the most fantastically awful abuses of English writing. The kind of language that should be taken out and shot. Each year applicants submit putrefying one-sentence openings to bogus novels...

As the New York Times reminds us, "[t]he contest is named after 19th-century author Edward Bulwer-Lytton, writer of the much-parodied opening 'It was a dark and stormy night.'"

And now, without furher ado, the winning opening line:

"Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped 'Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J.' "

Comments

[bearwad.livejournal.com]

years ago i had one of the compilations. i think it was called "son of dark and stormy night". it was a riot.

[martini-tim.livejournal.com]

I love this contest! You can read all of the winners and runners-up here. This one was my favorite:

"The pancake batter looked almost perfect, like the morning sun shining on the cream-colored bare shoulder of a gorgeous young blonde driving 30 miles over the speed limit down a rural Nebraska highway with the rental car's sunroof open, except it had a few lumps."