"It Was A Dark and Stormy Night"

I have been remiss in the past few years in my reportage of the winners of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. This is an annual competition sponsored by San Jose State University’s English Department to honor bad opening sentences of imaginary novels. It was inspired by the legendary bad opening sentence of Edward George Bulwer-Lytton’s 1830 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.”

As the department's website reports, in keeping with the gravitas, high seriousness, and general bignitude of the contest, the grand prize winner is awarded a pittance--which some reports indicate might be as much as $150.

To make up for lost time, here are the winners of the past three years’ competitions, beginning with 2016:

“Even from the hall, the overpowering stench told me the dingy caramel glow in his office would be from a ten-thousand-cigarette layer of nicotine baked on a naked bulb hanging from a frayed wire in the center of a likely cracked and water-stained ceiling, but I was broke, he was cheap, and I had to find her.”

                                                            —William "Barry" Brockett, Tallahassee, FL

“Seeing how the victim's body, or what remained of it, was wedged between the grill of the Peterbilt 389 and the bumper of the 2008 Cadillac Escalade EXT, officer ‘Dirk’ Dirksen wondered why reporters always used the phrase ‘sandwiched’ to describe such a scene since there was nothing appetizing about it, but still, he thought, they might have a point because some of this would probably end up on the front of his shirt.”

                                                            —Joel Phillips, West Trenton, NJ

“When the dead moose floated into view the famished crew cheered – this had to mean land! – but Captain Walgrove, flinty-eyed and clear headed thanks to the starvation cleanse in progress, gave fateful orders to remain on the original course and await the appearance of a second and confirming moose.”

                                                            — Betsy Dorfman, Bainbridge Island, WA

That old Bard of Buffalo Bayou has no trouble in writing bad opening lines for his verse, not to mention all that lines that follow:

            A fellow they called Bulwer-Lytton

            Wrote the worst books that ever were written,

                 But he said, “What the hell,

                 As long as they sell,

            I’ll be top of the heap here in Britain.”