It Was a Dark and Stormy Night

Sometimes, a race to the bottom can be more difficult than one involving excellence. This book is a collection of sentences of very bad fiction and after you stop laughing and deconstruct the prose, it is easy to understand how difficult it is to write something so bad. The entries are from the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest sponsored by San Jose State University and are designed to be the opening sentence to the worst possible novel. Amusing and atrocious, these sentences will make you groan as you read them and appreciate how bad they are. Which demonstrates how good the writers are, to make something this bad requires significant literary talent.

The Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest is an annual contest run by Scott Rice of San Jose State University. in which he challenges entrants to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels; the inspiration for the contest (and the title of it) is Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, who wrote the much-spoofed "Paul Clifford" in 1830, the novel that begins with the phrase, "It was a dark and stormy night...". This book is the fourth of, so far as I know, five collections of the best (most stunningly bad?) entries to that contest.

Many of us how to write bad Hemingway. Lots of us can write a bad novel noir, after, say, Raymond Chandler. But just a few pages of this book instruct us in a much broader range of bad writing. This book is a true classic and should be in every library. Or maybe, supressed...

Many of us know how to write bad Hemingway. Lots of us can write a bad novel noir, after, say, Raymond Chandler. But just a few pages of this book instruct us in a much broader range of bad writing. This book is a true classic and should be in every library. Or maybe, supressed...

This book is absolutely hilarious. It only takes a couple of sentences to figure out what it's about and a couple more before you're thinking of your own entry. You'll laugh. Alot.