MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
When it comes to recognizing good literature, you've got all kinds of prizes - the National Book Award, the Nobel, the Booker. But when it comes to recognizing truly bad writing, there's the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest for the worst opening sentence of an imaginary novel. Now, usually, they would be announcing a winner around now, but after more than four decades, the contest has come to an end. Deena Prichep brings us this remembrance.
DEENA PRICHEP, BYLINE: Scott Rice taught at San Jose State University, specializing in 18th century English literature. He loves Jane Austen, George Eliot, Charles Dickens. So why did he start a competition for bad writing?
SCOTT RICE: It was just something of a lark, you know? I just - sometimes you get tired of being serious.
PRICHEP: Rice launched the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest in 1983.
RICE: You just have to write one sentence. And it's just like getting to start a fight and not have to finish it.
PRICHEP: And it turns out bad writing has big fans.
RICE: We're getting at least 6,000 entries a year.
PRICHEP: And those entries were awful. Here's winner Dave Agans.
DAVE AGANS: (Reading) He glanced at his unsuspecting guests, his slight smile hiding his hateful mood, his calm eyes hiding his evil intentions and his smooth skin hiding his tense muscles, skeletal structure and internal organs.
PRICHEP: Another winner, Lawrence Person.
LAWRENCE PERSON: (Reading) She had the sort of body that reached out and slapped my face like a five-pound ham hock tossed from a speeding truck.
PRICHEP: And a third, Molly Ringle.
MOLLY RINGLE: (Reading) For the first month of Ricardo and Felicity's affair, they greeted one another at every stolen rendezvous with a kiss - a lengthy, ravenous kiss, Ricardo lapping and sucking at Felicity's mouth as if she were a giant cage-mounted water bottle and he were the world's thirstiest gerbil.
PRICHEP: Ringle, who's a writer and editor by profession, says there's something about the overstuffed sentences and ridiculous metaphors that take them from painfully awful to hilariously awful.
RINGLE: It actually takes some skill to write sentences as gloriously terrible as these are that have won the contest.
PRICHEP: When the contest started all those years ago, it seemed only natural to name it after Edward Bulwer-Lytton, author of a sentence that's become a shorthand for bad writing.
LILLIAN NAYDER: It was a dark and stormy night - the opening line of "Paul Clifford."
PRICHEP: Lillian Nayder teaches 19th century British literature at Bates College. She says, while Bulwer-Lytton has become something of a punch line, he was a celebrity in his day. He pioneered new genres, wrote bestsellers. He even got Dickens to change the ending of "Great Expectations."
NAYDER: I just think it's sort of unfortunate that he's been used as a sort of example of really poor writing when, in fact, he has a fair amount to offer.
PRICHEP: That being said, UCLA English professor Jonathan Grossman points out that he also did write some really bad lines.
JONATHAN GROSSMAN: (Reading) Do you sup with Glaucus tonight? said a young man of small stature who wore his tunic in those loose and effeminate folds, which proved him to be a gentleman and a coxcomb.
(Laughter) I don't know.
PRICHEP: But Grossman says while we may not want to read Bulwer-Lytton, his creativity left a mark on literature.
GROSSMAN: Which totally goes with the contest weirdly. Like, they're so inventive in the contest that they kind of capture the spirit of Bulwer-Lytton in that regard.
PRICHEP: And contest founder Scott Rice says that spirit continued throughout the years.
RICE: The contest, I think, has stayed fresh because the people keep reinventing it anew.
PRICHEP: Last year's contest was the final one. Rice wants to take a break and read other things. But while the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest has ended, bad writing, like our shimmering memories of the first smile on the lips of a newborn child who, like each of us, is made of stardust, will go on.
For NPR News, I'm Deena Prichep.
(SOUNDBITE OF DAFT PUNK'S "VOYAGER") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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