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On a late June day in recent years, Travis would always send me the winning entries of the annual Bulwer-Lytton contest, which, for a few of you who may not know, is the competition wherein one writes only the first line of a bad novel in the manner of Victorian author Edward George Bulwer-Lytton is famous -- or is it infamous -- for writing the novel that began: "It was a dark and stormy night."
Today a friend from another circle (but also a writer with a significantly warped personality) sent me this year's winners. In honor of Travis, I pass them along to you (and, I can't be sure, but I think he somehow managed to pen a couple of the winning entries -- No. 6 and No. 1 sound awfully Travis-like to me).
Best to all,
Linda Quigley
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Bulwer-Lytton 2000
10) As a scientist, Throckmorton knew that if he were ever to break
wind in the sound chamber he would never hear the end of it.
9) Just beyond the Narrows the river widens.
8) With a curvaceous figure that Venus would have envied, a tanned,
unblemished oval face framed with lustrous thick brown hair, deep
azure-blue eyes fringed with long black lashes, perfect teeth that
vied for competition, and a small straight nose, Marilee had a beauty
that defied description.
7) Andre, a simple peasant, had only one thing on his mind as he
crept
along the east wall: Andre creep ... Andre creep ... Andre creep.
6) Stanislaus Smedley, a man always on the cutting edge of
narcissism,
was about to give his body and soul to a back-alley sex-change
surgeon
to become the woman he loved.
5) Although Sarah had an abnormal fear of mice, it did not keep her
from eking out a living at a local pet store.
4) Stanley looked quite bored and somewhat detached, but then
penguins
often do.
3) Like an overripe beefsteak tomato rimmed with cottage cheese, the
corpulent remains of Santa Claus lay dead on the hotel floor.
2) Mike Hardware was the kind of private eye who didn't know the
meaning of the word fear, a man who could laugh in the face of danger
and spit in the eye of death-in short, a moron with suicidal
tendencies.
And the winner is . . .
1) The sun oozed over the horizon, shoved aside darkness, crept along
the greensward, and, with sickly fingers, pushed through the castle
window, revealing the pillaged princess, hand at throat, crown
asunder, gaping in frenzied horror at the sated, sodden amphibian
lying beside her, disbelieving the magnitude of the frog's deception,
screaming madly, "You lied!"
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