Victorian novelist Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton originated the phrases, “the pen is mightier than the sword,” “the great unwashed” and “the almighty dollar,” but is best known for opening one of his novels with the immortal words, ”It was a dark and stormy night.”
In his “honor” there is a competition each year for the worst (best) opening sentence for a novel. This year’s winner was David McKenzie who wrote:
Folks say that if you listen real close at the height of the full moon, when the wind is blowin’ off Nantucket Sound from the nor’ east and the dogs are howlin’ for no earthly reason, you can hear the awful screams of the crew of the “Ellie May,” a sturdy whaler Captained by John McTavish; for it was on just such a night when the rum was flowin’ and, Davey Jones be damned, big John brought his men on deck for the first of several screaming contests.
Can you imagine reading 300 pages of that? Teachers are not allowed to reply that they do so on a regular basis…
Source: http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/2009.htm
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{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
Regina 10.23.09 at 7:43 am
So bad, it’s good all over again.
Kim 10.23.09 at 8:39 am
Oh my goodness! I could hardly stand reading just that, much less 300 pages like it!
Eric 10.23.09 at 11:59 am
Given what comes today from the keyboards of journalists, not to mention the spoken English in the media, I am pleased that poor writing is still recognized. I will be ever grateful to the Jesuits for teaching excellent writing. I hope they still do.
Maura 10.23.09 at 12:28 pm
Oddly my interest was piqued. What on earth would inspire the captain to round up the crew for screaming contest? And why would there come to be several of them?
Poor writing yes… good story telling maybe? If my curiosity does drive me to read it I will be afraid to admit I did so to this audience.
P.S. The poor nuns, many of whom I gave even more gray hair to and a few of whom I may have driven to drink, did not succeed as the Jesuits did in your case Eric. They used to call me the queen of the run on sentance… and perhaps I still am.
Denise 10.23.09 at 12:42 pm
Maura, I have to agree that my interest was piqued too. I might not make it through 300 pages of this writing, but I would definitely give it a few pages just as a curiosity factor.
Eric 10.23.09 at 1:27 pm
Hmmm….? I assume Bulwer-Lytton was British. The almighty “dollar”? Not the almight “pound”?
Paul 10.23.09 at 1:28 pm
Maura & Denise,
There’s one word for people like you — masochists!
Paul
Paul 10.23.09 at 1:30 pm
Eric,
Yes, as British as you can get. But he did witness the rise of the American economy and was not frightened to call a fiscal spade a fiscal spade!
Paul
Paul 10.23.09 at 1:31 pm
Regina,
If it was so bad it was “good,” then follow the link at the end of posting and you can read acres more of the bad prose that was submitted for the competition.
Paul
Paul 10.23.09 at 1:34 pm
Kim,
You’re not a teacher, are you? Some papers submitted by my students were so grammatically tortured that you would have sworn they were written by monkeys pounding on typewriters. [My apologies to all monkey lovers!]
Paul
Michelle 10.27.09 at 5:32 am
As the early morning rain fell in sheets on the slate roof, and the children crept about the darkened house like fresh zombies, I, carrying my cup of steaming black Assam in my hand – oversweet as always — sat down to peruse People for Others; it was only then that I noticed the body in the middle of the sunroom floor (I must have stepped over it at least twice).
Though late to the game, I enjoyed this link! And yes, you have to be a teacher to appreciate the joys and pains of truly awful prose, the ins and outs of tortured grammar…the, oh sorry, I got a bit carried away there….
Anyway – there is a similar thread in this story at the Columbia Journalism Review about what makes a good tweet. I suppose this comment is a good example of why I neither tweet nor write novels!