Bad writing prize

[DesertFox]

A Wisconsin man whose blend of awkward syntax, imminent disaster and bathroom humour offends both good taste and the English language won an annual contest Monday that salutes bad writing.

Jim Gleeson, 47, of Madison, Wis., beat out thousands of other prose manglers in San Jose State University's 2007 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest with this convoluted opening sentence to a nonexistent novel:

"Gerald began - but was interrupted by a piercing whistle which cost him ten per cent of his hearing permanently, as it did everyone else in a ten-mile radius of the eruption, not that it mattered much because for them 'permanently' meant the next ten minutes or so until buried by searing lava or suffocated by choking ash - to pee," Gleeson wrote.

Scott Rice, an English professor at San Jose State, called Gleeson's entry a "syntactic atrocity" that displays "a peculiar set of standards or values." Rice has organized the contest since founding it in 1982.

More (http://www.cbc.ca/cp/Oddities/070730/K073033AU.html)

[DoctorDoom]

The hardest thing in the world for a skilled author to do is to write egregious crap deliberately. Try it.

BTW, for those who may not have heard of the illustrious Bulwer-Lytton, this is how he established his infamy, and why he was immortalized by Snoopy:

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Paul Clifford

Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford (1830)

Chapter I

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 house-tops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness. Through one of the obscurest quarters of London, and among haunts little loved by the gentlemen of the police, a man, evidently of the lowest orders, was wending his solitary way. He stopped twice or thrice at different shops and houses of a description correspondent with the appearance of the quartier in which they were situated,--and tended inquiry for some article or another which did not seem easily to be met with. All the answers he received were couched in the negative; and as he turned from each door he muttered to himself, in no very elegant phraseology, his disappointment and discontent.

At length, at one house, the landlord, a sturdy butcher, after rendering the same reply the inquirer had hitherto received, added,--"But if this vill do as vell, Dummie, it is quite at your sarvice!" Pausing reflectively for a moment, Dummie responded, that he thought the thing proffered might do as well; and thrusting it into his ample pocket he strode away with as rapid a motion as the wind and rain would allow. He soon came to a nest of low and dingy buildings, at the entrance to which, in half-effaced characters was written "Thames Court." Having at the most conspicuous of these buildings, an inn or alehouse through the half-closed windows of which blazed out in ruddy comfort the beams of the hospitable hearth, he knocked hastily at the door. He was admitted by a lady of a certain age, and endowed with a comely rotundity of face and person.

The difference between Bulwer-Lytton and the contest winners is that B-L took his writing seriously.

Here's the contest website with all the winners.

Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest 2007 Results (http://www.sjsu.edu/depts/english/2007.htm)

[ThomasMore]

Those are absolutely hilarious. The winner's entry had me laughing out loud.

The children's story about the grizzly cub was very funny, too.