2006 Bulwer Lytton contest results revealed

We all remember Charlie Brown's dog Snoopy and his many attempts at writing a novel. They invariably start with "It was a dark and stormy night. Lighting flashed. Suddenly, a shot rang out! The maid screamed!..." and so on.

What Charles Schulz was parodying was the opening lines of PAUL CLIFFORD, the magnum opus of Edward George Bulwer-Lytton. Bulwer-Lytton's turgid prose and run-on sentences (which was perfectly acceptable during the era of his writing career, during the 1830s) seems comically amateurish today; indeed, the famous BULWER-LYTTON FICTION WRITING CONTEST, held annually, seeks to find the ideal parody of Bulwer-Lytton's style. The contest entries range from wretched to brilliant, and the winners never fail to elicit a chuckle.

The results for 2006 are announced here.

Here's the winning entry:

Detective Bart Lasiter was in his office studying the light from his one small window falling on his super burrito when the door swung open to reveal a woman whose body said you've had your last burrito for a while, whose face said angels did exist, and whose eyes said she could make you dig your own grave and lick the shovel clean.

Jim Guigli
Carmichael, CA

(from the b-l site)
A retired mechanical designer for the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory is the winner of the 24th running of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. A resident of the Sacramento suburb of Carmichael, Guigli displayed appalling powers of invention by submitting sixty entries to the 2006 Contest, including one that has been "honored" in the Historical Fiction Category. "My motivation for entering the contest," he confesses, "was to find a constructive outlet for my dementia."

Guigli's entry certainly is impressive, but I have to confess I laughed loud and long when I read THIS runner up:

"I know what you're thinking, punk," hissed Wordy Harry to his new editor, "you're thinking, 'Did he use six superfluous adjectives or only five?' - and to tell the truth, I forgot myself in all this excitement; but being as this is English, the most powerful language in the world, whose subtle nuances will blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel loquacious?' - well do you, punk?"

Stuart Vasepuru
Edinburgh, Scotland

Now THAT's some turgid prose! I guess the judges found it too gimmicky. In any event, the results are worth a visit!

I might point out in passing that PAUL CLIFFORD, the source for all this parody, remains in print to this very day, while these contests and cartoonists come and go. So Bulwer-Lytton is actually enjoying a cosmic "last laugh" at their expense.

RELATED LINK: GUTENBERG edition of Paul Clifford