"It's like the Nobel Prize for Literature," explains 2008 recipient Garrison Spik, whose day job is communications director for Mervis Diamond Importers. "But at the other end of the spectrum. And the prize money is $999,750 less." The Bulwer-Lytton, in fact, rewards the most wretched, the most inept, the most fantastically awful abuses of English writing. The kind of language that should be taken out and shot. Each year applicants submit putrefying one-sentence openings to bogus novels; this year Spik's was chosen from some 8,000 entries.
It reads:
"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.' "
From "Purple Prose? His Is Truly Bruising," in today's Washington Post. I think I need to get started on my own entry for next year...
1 comment:
Way to go, Garrison. I had never thought about rewarding the Worst writing before. As it happens, I recently started a writing contest myself and am awarding the writer of the Best limerick a diamond pendant.
The rules are simply that the poem must include an element of love, romance, engagements, weddings, etc. and also a flavor of Washington, DC. You can see more here:
Washington DC Poetry Contest - Win a Diamond Pendant
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