It Was A . . .

This is a chance for me to think more highly of myself as a writer.

Every year the English department of San Jose State University holds the Bulwer-Lytton competition. It is named after Victorian novelist Edward George Bulwer-Lytton.

Why honor a person with whom you are likely unfamiliar? He is the author infamous for the cliché opening line, “It was a dark and stormy night.” Prepare yourself. It’s literature but it ain’t Shakespeare.

There are various categories but Cathy Bryant of Manchester, United Kingdom, took the overall prize with:

As he told her that he loved her she gazed into his eyes, wondering, as she noted the infestation of eyelash mites, the tiny deodicids burrowing into his follicles to eat the greasy sebum therein, each female laying up to 25 eggs in a single follicle, causing inflammation, whether the eyes are truly the windows of the soul; and, if so, his soul needed regrouting.

Professor Scott Rice, creator of the competition, offered a special commendation to David Pepper of Hermosa Beach California:

As an ornithologist, George was fascinated by the fact that urine and feces mix in birds’ rectums to form a unified, homogeneous slurry that is expelled through defecation, although eying Greta’s face, and sensing the reaction of the congregation, he immediately realized he should have used a different analogy to describe their relationship in his wedding vows.

Dan Leyde of Edmonds, Washington scored in the Romance category with:

“Your eyes are like deep blue pools that I would like to drown in,” he had told Kimberly when she had asked him what he was thinking; but what he was actually thinking was that sometimes when he recharges his phone he forgets to put the little plug back in but he wasn’t going to tell her that.

Appleton Wisconsin’s Sue Fondrie  earned honorable mention in the Crime category:

She slinked through my door wearing a dress that looked like it had been painted on … not with good paint, like Behr or Sherwin-Williams, but with that watered-down stuff that bubbles up right away if you don’t prime the surface before you slap it on, and – just like that cheap paint – the dress needed two more coats to cover her.

Dishonorable mention for Crime went to Kevin Bruemmer of San Antonio, Texas with:

The smooth hand I was caressing felt as if it belonged to a Persian monk that had been rubbing moisturizing body oils on his fellow monks all day (but not in a gay way, come on, he’s a monk for God’s sake), when in all actuality the hand belonged to a body that I had just pulled out of the Potomac for forensic investigation.

You are welcome to make your own nominations at their web site.

.

.

Tagged as: appleton, behr, bulwer-lytton, california, edmonds, hermosa beach, manchester, san antonio, san jose, scott rice, shakespeare, sherwin-williams, texas, united kingdom, university, washington, wisconsin