The Write Stuff?

It was some dark and stormy drivel…

Today the Santa Fe Reporter celebrates fine writing, with the results of our annual competition. To the winners, huzzah!

But even as we showcase excellent writing, it is worth remembering there are other kinds of writing as well, ranging from great to good to mediocre to horrible, right down to Sarah Palin collaborating with Honey Boo Boo on a sequel to Moby Dick.

Here's something that puzzles me. We have no shortage of bad literature in this country, yet for some reason we've chosen to pick on a poor 19th century British writer as a measure of how extremely awful the printed word can be.

Poor, poor Edward Bulwer-Lytton (pictured at above, we think). He left us such enduring phrases as "the great unwashed" and "the pen is mightier than the sword." But mention his name today and all anybody remembers is the opening sentence from his 1830 novel, Paul Clifford.

This is that sentence:

"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."

Here's a tip. If you're going to produce a steaming turd like that, don't make it the opening sentence. Put it in Chapter 14, immediately following a torrid sex scene where bodices get ripped from heaving bosoms and sweat-slicked lovers do you-know-what in the scorching afternoon heat.

If you search online for Edward Bulwer-Lytton's name, you will find the wildly popular Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, which annually awards prizes for the best imitation of that opening sentence. Each year, the competition attracts thousands of entries from deliberately abysmal scribes.

Call me crazy, but it seems a bit unfair that a nation that produced The Bridges of Madison County and The Dukes of Hazzard is looking to the nation that produced David Copperfield and Hamlet for examples of bad writing.

I wonder how Bulwer-Lytton might have begun his book had he lived in modern-day Santa Fe instead of 19th century London. Hmmmm.

"It was a parched December day, as dry as a shin bone left behind by the Donner Party; throat-choking dust floated through Santa Fe (for it is in Santa Fe that our scene lies), as if God had dropped a million used vacuum cleaner bags to burst over the Plaza, as a moistureless breeze fiercely agitated the flames in the sand-anchored farolitos dotting the downtown for the holiday the locals called Christmas."

This is bad, but not bad enough. Sorry. Permit me to try again.

"It was a dark and stormy night; by which I mean the gang at Secreto Bar was drinking a cocktail called the Dark and Stormy, a mixture of dark rum and ginger beer that can get you drunk real fast, and soon the slurred conversation turned to how the drink got its name, and one guy said it must have something to do with Game of Thrones, because doesn't everything these days?"

Still not bad enough? Once more.

"It was a dark and stormy night; Paul was pelted painfully by hail the size of hail as he hurried through the Trader Joe's parking lot, and reaching the long line of shopping carts he was unable to pry one free, and so, badly needing ginger snaps and Two-Buck Chuck and chocolate-covered potato chips, he gave a violent jerk, heaved and began pushing thirty-two interlocked carts through the store, noisily rattling like the Rail Runner as it rattles in its rattling way out of town."

I've done it! That's it! That is beyond awful! Feel free to try your own by emailing me or adding it to our online comments.

You know, a bit of irony just occurred to me. If Bulwer-Lytton were alive today he probably couldn't win the Bulwer-Lytton Contest. Let's face it: He's just not bad enough to hack it in 2014.

Robert Basler’s humor column runs twice monthly in SFR. Email the author: bluecorn@sfreporter.com

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