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North Dakota Man Wins Bad Writing Prize
Coming hot on the heels of last month’s Stupidity Awards, the literary world recognized the worst in writing this week with the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. The Department of English and Comparative Literature at San Jose State University awards this every year to commemorate the awfulness of Paul Clifford by Edward George Bulwer-Lytton. This year’s top prize went to Dan McKay of Fargo, North Dakota, for comparing a woman’s form to the inside of a car engine.
“It was a dark and stormy night” is now a cultural tag line often taken without a complete appreciation for the true awfulness of Mr. Bulwer-Lytton’s work. In the interests of literary scholarship and for a laugh, here is the opening line in full:
It was a dark and stormy night; 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.
Mr. McKay is a quantitative analyst for Microsoft Great Plain and is currently traveling in China. A handsome $250 check awaits his return to Fargo, and international fame for writing this (and one presumes he is currently either unmarried or owns a particularly comfortable couch):
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.
Interested parties can read the top entries in several categories with some runners-up included at the Bulwer-Lytton contest site. Of course, there ought to be some award for coming up with an article for an internet journal that relies on shamelessly cribbing from the works of others to pad the piece out , while at the same time giving them full credit for their work to avoid copyright difficulties. Perhaps next year . . . .
© Copyright 2005 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.
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