Posted on 07/17/2004 9:09:20 AM PDT by Xenalyte
Since 1982, the English Department at San Jose State University has sponsored the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, a whimsical literary competition that challenges entrants to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels. The BLFC was the brainchild (or Rosemary's baby) of Professor Scott Rice, whose graduate school excavations unearthed the source of the line "It was a dark and stormy night." Sentenced to write a seminar paper on a minor Victorian novelist, he chose the man with the funny hyphenated name, Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, who was best known for perpetrating The Last Days of Pompeii, Eugene Aram, Rienzi, The Caxtons, The Coming Race, and--not least--Paul Clifford, whose famous opener has been plagiarized repeatedly by Snoopy.
(Excerpt) Read more at bulwer-lytton.com ...
"You put a turnequette around his neck, Herr Doktor?"
Shuffling down the sidewalk to get the paper, Randolph noticed his big toes jamming painfully against his wooden clogs again, reminding him he would have to tell Bernice to go down to the Greyhound terminal to get his toe nail clippers out of locker 23, the same locker where they had kept sharp tools ever since Bernice's grandmother moved in.
It was a dark and stormy night this hot summer day that I realized my brother was an only child.
Bernice never liked going to any terminals on short notice, why, she had been in the midst of massaging her grandmother’s single finger, but she was respectful of Randolph’s loaded revolver and suffered from paraliphobia as well, so she shuffled her way downtown, wearing a little yellow biker’s helmet with rearview mirrors, so she could keep her eye on Randolph.
Savage, cruel, offensive - but right on target!
He strode down the hall, sensing the warmth of the press pool, a kind of warmth not unlike the warmth coming from the heaving bosom of a somewhat overweight intern. As he walked confidently into the squirming mass of sycophantic scribes, he bit his lower lip, the one that had been blessedly bloodied by a Hillary-hurled vase. The exquisite pain flowed like votes from an inner city church bringing on a subtle tremor as he stepped to the microphone.
He fixed his sights on Helen Thomas, her ogrish eyes fixed on his with a lust that brought ice to his ventricles.
Then, with every bit of earnestness he could muster, he delivered a message to his intern. "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky." It was the only true statement he would make all day, he had never had sexual relations with Helen Thomas.
Bernice, in yellow helmet and blue bathrobe, felt like a worn old shoe; no, not some fuzzy slipper from childhood or one of Willy Loman’s brogans, but the kind of shoe that you’d disinfect in bleach before pitching it, the kind of shoe that not even a puppy would playfully toss around, that kind of shoe, that’s how Bernice felt.
Her teeth were like a string of pearls in the oyster of her mouth, and when she used that coral lipstick he wished only to swim in the ocean of her kiss.
"I voted for it before I voted against it," said the candidate as he looked longingly into his running mate's eyes.
Hey! That's my line!
-PJ
That's not original......
but it's been years since I even thought about Richard Brautigan
Correct. The thread did say we could post our favorites from other works. But I should have attributed it. I left part of it out also.
In watermelon sugar, the deeds were done, and done again, as my life is done, in watermelon sugar. -Richard Brautigan
Better?
I liked a lot of his stuff. Made me laugh and made me think. He commited suicide.
Yeah. I remember hearing about his suicide. Sad.
And who can forget Trout Fishing in America ?
Cambodia - I can't believe I'm in f***ing Cambodia.
Heh. We should keep this thread alive indefinitely, using new material supplied by the hapless Dems.
My favorite work of fiction....
It was a dark and stormy night. Martin Luther King had just been assasinated and my pet dog "VC" had just gone over the side along with one of my crew. Suddenly, we were under heavy fire from both sides of the shoreline. They were lined up for miles shooting rice bullets at all the swift boats. Though the rice could not do any damage to our hulls, I was severely wounded with rice shrapnel. Still, I managed to pull my crew member and the dog from the raging river and rescue them both from certain death by rice bullets and I did so leaving plenty of time before the sun came up for a little shore leave which included some village burning, ear chopping, and genital electrocuting. Due to Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, everyone but me forgot that the dog ever existed and that I was the best swift boat commander to ever draw breath, but it's all true. Trust me.
The End.
[ Until I change it again. ]
John F. Kerry
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