Have you ever heard of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest? It was founded in 1982 by the English Department of San Jose State University, partially in honor of Edward George Bulwer-Lytton (the novelist who composed the mother of all bad opening sentences) and partially because the creator, one Professor Scott Rice, thought it would be a relief to judge a writing contest with short entries (each entry is limited to one sentence in length). This year’s winner, submitted by Mr. Garrison Spick of Washington, D.C., was announced on August 14, 2008:
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.”
Now if that’s not classic literature, I don’t know what is.
If you’d care to learn more, here’s an NPR interview with Professor Rice as he discusses the 2007 contest (for your listening pleasure), and here we have a list of the past winners. Read it and I’m sure you’ll feel inspired – or perhaps vaguely ill!
So now I challenge you, gentle readers, to create your own horrible first line. But since this is the library blog, after all, how about making it library-related? Here’s my entry:
The inner recesses of her mind were dark, musty, and slightly damp…as if someone had dropped an opened and three-quarters full bottle of flat Mountain Dew (not diet, mind you) into an overstuffed book drop full of neglected literary criticism and left it to percolate in the sultry August afternoon heat, attracting both sweat-drenched library clerks and irritated wasps alike.
Ha! Beat that, people! I look forward to reading your attempts.
6 Comments
August 19, 2008 at 10:12 am
And, of course, there is always a Pittsburgh connection. A mere handful of blocks from our beloved Main Library, tucked in between Parkman, Tennyson and Ruskin Avenues (all famed 19th century writers,) is, ta-da, Lytton Avenue.
Famed 19th century writer, indeed.
D
August 19, 2008 at 12:19 pm
Jim entered the imposing portals (not the portal entrance, because it is not imposing and involves a really steep climb which he couldn’t face because of his fear of glass steps, although he planned on discussing it with his shrink) of Carnegie Library eager to see his favorite librarian about a book on phobias, who unbeknownst to him wasn’t in, having just exited down those glass steps and through the unimposing portal, so he asked someone else for the book.
August 19, 2008 at 1:28 pm
Ah, a most excellent use of portals! And it’s about time we faced the all-too-common patron fear of our glass steps and floors.
Amy!
August 21, 2008 at 4:12 pm
The Children’s Department was as loaded as a wet Pampers when the third camp group of 30 rambunctious eight-year-olds stampeded over the stain-resistant nonflammable Demco Hungry Caterpillar carpet, their lone counselor playfully announcing “We didn’t have anything better to do and it was raining” as his charges swept armfuls of books from the shelves on the way to the (what the librarians referred to as) filtered (but they could easily get around that) computers, and the lone librarian on the reference desk struggled in vain to hear the soft-spoken phone customer who seemed to be inquiring after a book he had read in 1947 that featured a dog (or did he say frog) and had a red (or maybe he said blue) cover and came highly recommended by his fourth-grade teacher whose name rhymed with the word orange who she had to put on hold to better cry out “What part of ‘library voices’ do you not understand?”
August 21, 2008 at 4:53 pm
Wonderful! Delightful!
(And it was green, by the way.)
Amy
August 22, 2008 at 10:34 am
*dies*
Patte, Bobbie, thos were fabulous!
LAV