It was a dark and stormy night…

Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, the first Baron Lytton (see a theme yet?) was a 19th century English novelist and politician. He had an unusually florid writing style, and whilst he was popular at the time, he has become the poster-child for everything that we consider wrong about 19th C. prose. He coined a number of phrases that are still knocking around, such as “the great unwashed” and “the pen is mightier than the sword”, but his greatest infamy is the opening sentence of his novel Paul Clifford:

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.

When did you last know a stormy night which wasn’t dark? The book itself is about a highly-respectable English gentleman who leads a dual life as a criminal, and although it did well, the writing doesn’t get any saner later on. Still. It’s better than The Eye of Argon.

The annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest was created in 1982 by Scott Rice, Professor of English at the San Jose State University. It asks entrants to create the opening sentence of the worst possible novel imaginable.  The contest now attracts thousands of entries every year, and the results tend to end up on major news networks all over the world. Provided it’s a quiet week, of course.

This year’s results have just been announced, and the 2009 Grand Prize winner is David McKenzie of Federal Way, Washington. A former winner of the Western and Children’s categories, he is clearly an unsually talented author of purple prose:

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.

There’s loads more goodness to be found at the The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest 2009 Results.