The Bulwer-Lytton prize, named after the author who first set down “It was a dark and stormy night,” is a parody award given to bad writing.
This year’s “winners” have been announced.
Thing is, I’d totally read a novel that began:
Mike Hummer had been a private detective so long he could remember Preparation A, his hair reminded everyone of a rat who’d bitten into an electrical cord, but he could still run faster than greased owl snot when he was on a bad guy’s trail, and they said his friskings were a lot like getting a vasectomy at Sears.
Because, seriously, a Sears vasectomy is the sort of imagery that would keep me going at least 50 more pages.
In fact, I kinda think the only bad thing about that entry is the comma splice after “Preparation A.”
More winners:
August 17, 2008 at 4:00 am
When I was a kid, my Dad read us stories before bed. I always wanted him to tell me the ones he made up out of his head. Most of the time that’s how they began: “It was a dark and stormy night. And on that night, you were born, under a cabbage leaf.”
Once he even used a fake hand as a prop, scaring the crap outta me.
I thought he coined that phrase.