From the Salmon

Well, I’m still battling my cold and losing.

I’ve written before about the restorative powers of bad writing, so I was delighted to discover that this year’s winners have been announced for the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, which honors the best (or worst) annual attempts at the opening line to the world’s worst novel (in honor of Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, of “It was a dark and stormy night...” fame).

The Grand Prize winner was submitted by Dan McKay of Fargo:

As he stared at her ample bosom, he daydreamed of the dual Stromberg carburetors in his vintage Triumph Spitfire, highly functional yet pleasingly formed, perched prominently on top of the intake manifold, aching for experienced hands, the small knurled caps of the oil dampeners begging to be inspected and adjusted as described in chapter seven of the shop manual.

That’s lusciously horrible, alright. But the line that provoked a coughing fit so severe it made me doubt the whole restorative nature of this exercise was sent in by Alf Seegert of Salt Lake City:

Wet leaves stuck to the spinning wagon wheels like feathers to a freshly tarred heretic, reminding those who watched them of the endless movement of the leafy earth — or so they would have, if only those fifteenth-century onlookers had believed that the earth actually rotated, which they didn’t, which is why it was heretical to say that it did — and which is the reason why the wagon held a freshly tarred heretic in the first place.

Another that I particularly enjoyed (spelling errors and all — no one ever claimed this was good writing) came from Keriann Noble of Murray, UT:

As soon as Sherriff Russell heard Bradshaw say, “This town ain’t big enough for the both of us,” he inadvertantly visualized a tiny chalk-line circle with a town sign that said ‘population 1,’ and the two of them both trying to stand inside of it rather ineffectively, leaning this way and that, trying to keep their balance without stepping outside of the line, and that was why he was smiling when Bradshaw shot him.

The fine folks at San Jose State have posted dozens of additional entries for your reading displeasure. Have fun.