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Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest 2006 Results
San Diego State University ^ | July 12 2006 | Jim Guigli et. al.

Posted on 07/12/2006 8:21:29 AM PDT by fzx12345

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.

(Excerpt) Read more at 2.sjsu.edu ...


TOPICS: Books/Literature; Cheese, Moose, Sister; Humor; Weird Stuff
KEYWORDS: bulwerlytton
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."

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 the essence of simplicity: 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 "pursuit of 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 annually attracted thousands of entries from all over the world.

While the Winner parodies hard-boiled detective fiction, the runner-up toys with perhaps the most famous piece of dialogue from Clint Eastwood's "Dirty Harry" movie. In keeping with the bignitude and high seriousness of the Contest, the Grand Prize winner will receive a pittance. Other winners must content themselves with becoming household names.

1 posted on 07/12/2006 8:21:32 AM PDT by fzx12345
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To: fzx12345; ZGuy

Join us over here on this thread. Zguy posted it yesterday. I think it is the same source. San Jose State.


http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1663695/posts


2 posted on 07/12/2006 8:27:26 AM PDT by bwteim (Stop in at the FReepathon --- Loosen your Wallet --- Not All of the Best Things in Life are Free)
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Alas, the winner is...

Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest 2006 Results
San Jose State English Dept. | 7/11/6 | Atrocious Writers
Posted on 07/11/2006 10:41:31 AM EDT by ZGuy
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1663695/posts


3 posted on 07/22/2006 10:54:54 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (updated my FR profile on Wednesday, June 21, 2006. https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
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Alas, the winner is...

Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest 2006 Results
San Jose State English Dept. | 7/11/6 | Atrocious Writers
Posted on 07/11/2006 10:41:31 AM EDT by ZGuy
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1663695/posts


4 posted on 07/22/2006 10:55:16 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (updated my FR profile on Wednesday, June 21, 2006. https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
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