Saturday, August 16, 2008

Bad Beginnings

Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped "Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J."
If you think this is a dreadful first sentence for a novel - well that's exactly what it is supposed to be! Garrison Spik (pronounced "speak") is the winner of the 2008 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, an international literary parody contest which commemorates Victorian novelist Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton.

Entrants submit bad opening sentences to imaginary novels. The whole list of entries makes very enjoyable reading. [Found via.]

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Go George! the dark and stormy knight plods wearily onward.