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One of my favorite annual events has once again come and gone: The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest.
I’m a newspaper reporter, so I don’t write fiction — at least, not intentionally. I’ve never been one to sit there and dream up things; I find real life much more interesting. When I check out books at the library, I look at the non-fiction entries and usually choose one. The only fiction writer I can say I’ve read with any regularity is Tom Clancy, and I haven’t really read anything new from him since 2000’s “The Bear and the Dragon.”
The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, which just concluded its 26th annual session, asks writers across this great country of ours to write the worst opening sentence to a non-existent novel. AP moved a story on it last week, but we didn’t have room to use it in the News-Banner. According to the AP’s story and the contest’s Web site, this was the winning entry, submitted by Garrison Spik of Washington, D.C.
“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.”’
I’ve used bad analogies in my writing before, but I don’t think I can come close to that.
My favorites each year are the puns. They always always require setting up, so the writers are forced to use a lot of words for a single sentence. (Hey, it’s all supposed to be bad writing anyway, isn’t it?) The best of this year’s puns, again off the Web site — www.bulwer-lytton.com — is this alleged gem:
“Vowing revenge on his English teacher for making him memorize Wordsworth’s ‘Intimations of Immortality,’ Warren decided to pour sugar in her gas tank, but he inadvertently grabbed a sugar substitute so it was actually Splenda in the gas.”
That was submitted by Becky Mushko of Penhook, Va., and was named the best in the “Vile Puns” category. What makes it doubly delicious as that the poem mentioned by Wordsworth is actually the origin of the phrase, “splendor in the grass.”
My personal favorite, though, is the runner-up, from Michael L. VanBlaricum of Santa Barbara, Calif.
“The Jones family held their annual family reunion on Easter going through over six dozen spiral-cut, hickory-smoked hams and several bottles of a fine Australian shiraz, before Farmer Jones, the head of the family, took the leavings back to Manor Farm to slop Napoleon and his other champion hogs but the seventy-six ham bones fed the pig’s tirade.”
There are people out there such as broadcasters, athletes, politicians — especially politicians! — who try their best to do things well and wind up screwing them up. The world is usually a meritocracy, where excellence is rewarded and poor performance is devalued. Then again, how do we explain William Hung, the poor schmo of “American Idol” fame (or infamy) a few years ago, who couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket — yet wound up releasing a CD that people could actually buy?
All we can do — individually and as a society — is to work for excellence. As Mr. Spik can tell you, we can be very good at being very bad.
When Ben Stein had his own game show (“Win Ben Stein’s Money”), he would enter into the final round by telling Jimmy Kimmel, “I shall do my best.” I, too, shall do my best. If my best isn’t good enough, I apologize. Yet I don’t think I’ll ever be a threat to win the Bulwer-Lytton contest. I can’t be that bad.
Can I?
By DAVE SCHULTZ
daves@news-banner.com
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