This Is So Not Good Writing

Detective Bart Lasiter was in his office studying the light from his one small window falling on his super burrito when the door swung open to reveal a woman whose body said you've had your last burrito for a while, whose face said angels did exist, and whose eyes said she could make you dig your own grave and lick the shovel clean. --Jim Guigli, winner

Yes! San Jose State University has announced the winners of the 2006 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. As you can see from the winning entry above, the judges at SJSU have not changed their standards one iota from past years.

As you may remember from a previous post, the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest honors the memory of Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, a 19th c. British writer. But was he so horrible? If we can measure one's greatness by relative immortality, then Bulwer-Lytton is a success, since it was he who coined enduring cliches such as "the pen is mightier than the sword," "the great unwashed," and "pursuit of the almighty dollar." Furthermore, Bulwer-Lytton's most famous opening sentence--It was a dark and stormy night . . . --achieved gilded immortality as the opening sentence of Madeleine L'Engle's Newbery Medal novel A Wrinkle in Time.

"I know what you're thinking, punk," hissed Wordy Harry to his new editor, "you're thinking, 'Did he use six superfluous adjectives or only five?' - and to tell the truth, I forgot myself in all this excitement; but being as this is English, the most powerful language in the world, whose subtle nuances will blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel loquacious?' - well do you, punk?" --Stuart Vasepuru, runner-up