Scott Rice

The secret of what would make a successful Bulwer Lytton Contest entry, decided Elwood Featherstonehough (pronounced 'Fanshaw') as he waded through the thick treacle of a hundred and twenty pages of main clauses riven asunder by agonizingly long-winded subordinates peppered with preposterous character names, irrelevant asides, and unnecessarily overwrought and awkwardly alliterative prose, was perhaps destined forever to remain tantalizingly just beyond his purview.

A collection of entries from the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction contest. Named in honour of the Victorian literary has-been Edward Bulwer-Lytton, this is the world-famous competition that seeks to find the most atrocious opening sentence to a hypothetical lousy novel. "Abounding in shameless sentences, this is a hilarious, even perversely instructive, collection of skilled ineptitude." - from the jacket notes.
A few heroic entries:
"The surface of the strange forbidden planet was roughly textured and show more green, much like cottage cheese gets way after the date on the lid says it is all right to buy it."
"Safeway wasn't open when Keegan pulled his Chevy into the lot, its valves chattering, gun-blue cracked-ring smoke sputtering from its tail pipe, to get eggs."
"Just beyond the Narrows the river widens."
"He was a hairy Portuguese who had never fished and she was Chinese who couldn't cook rice; he had enough hair on his chest to make a coat for a very small Hungarian and the way she kissed it made him wonder why."
Like potato chips - you can't read just one! Very good. show less

Not exactly a laugh-a-thon, but good for a few snickers (especially the "Vile Puns" section). Many of the entries are brilliant in the manner of "someone impersonating a drunk on ice skates," as the introduction's metaphor goes. It offers good exercise for writers like me. I attempted to parse what made each entry a bad opening line. I'm not sure I've passed, since some of these false starts had genuine hooks to them, I thought (how did someone drown in their sleep? I want to know.) I think show more some of the entries are more subtle, where perhaps the sentences themselves aren't bad but suggest the (non-existent) novel to follow would be bad by implication. I won't go hunting for more in this series, but one was fun to read. show less

Hilarious second collection of entries into a bad written contest that challenges contributors to craft the worst possible opening sentence for a novel. Possibly more enjoyable for those who write prose, but definitely amusing for anyone that enjoys reading.