Canadian wins this year's Bulwer-Lytton Fiction contest

July 10, 2001 1:46 PM

Canadian wins this year's Bulwer-Lytton Fiction contest with an atrocious entry about the running of the Pomeranians. Personally, I prefer the second place winner's wonderfully tortured description of a butterfly in a cemetery. Sadly, the contest's official website seems to be down for the time being. [via mobylives]
posted by turaho (6 comments total)

The 2001 results are available here, courtesy of San Jose State's English Department.
posted by waxpancake at 2:00 PM on July 10, 2001

The lazy gray day of winter plodded into town like a dirty horse. I owned two horses, both gray, much like today. The grayness of the day and the sheer plodding of the weather as it strode into our town made my horses nervous. They feared the dark clouds, because when they looked up, they saw themselves.
posted by perplexed at 2:13 PM on July 10, 2001

There was no describing the sensation that came over him just then, but if one were to try, one might say that it was akin to the feeling of surfing down a hill wearing sneaker-pumps half-filled with day-old clam chowder, or perhaps that of sitting in the passenger cabin of a Boeing 747 being set on the ground by a rookie pilot who graduated at the bottom of his class in a seat lined by muzzled pit vipers, or even-- come to think of it, there really WAS no describing the sensation.
posted by MonkeyMeat at 2:20 PM on July 10, 2001

The web site says that Bulwer-Lytton was the guy who first compared the relative strength of swords and pens, but I could swear the phrase was around before that. In fact, didn't Cervantes say something about how no one should even think about telling him that the pen was mightier than the sword? (He would know)
posted by Hildago at 6:16 PM on July 10, 2001

The depressing thing about Bulwer-Lytton is that he is, in fact, a central figure in the history of the novel--he invents several genres wholesale and makes influential contributions to others (like the historical novel). It's just that his prose is pretty horrific.
posted by thomas j wise at 7:19 PM on July 10, 2001

I like the SciFi winner, especially in light of this.
posted by thijsk at 12:26 AM on July 11, 2001