A friend sent this reference which seemed appropriate to mailing FOT.
mike kowalski
FP1500spit
BULWER-LYTTON CONTEST
An international literary parody contest, the competition honors the memory
(if not the reputation) of Victorian novelist Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton
(1803-1873). The goal of the contest is childishly simple: entrants are
challenged to submit bad opening sentences to imaginary novels. Although best
known for "The Last Days of Pompeii" (1834), which has been made into a movie
three times, originating the expression "the pen is mightier than the sword,"
and phrases like "the great unwashed" and "the almighty dollar," Bulwer-Lytton
opened his novel Paul Clifford (1830) with the immortal words that the
"Peanuts" Beagle Snoopy plagiarized for years, "It was a dark and stormy
night."
The contest began in 1982 as a quiet campus affair, attracting only three
submissions. This response being a thunderous success by academic standards,
the contest went public the following year and ever since has attracted
thousands of annual entries from all over the world.
Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest
2005 Results
THE WINNER!
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.
Dan McKay
Fargo, ND
|