Miscellaneous

If one of your secret pleasures is intentionally godawful prose, then you?ll want to peruse this year?s Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest Winners. The contest is named after Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, whose inspired Snoopy with his famous opening, ?It was a dark and stormy night....? My favorite is by Dennis Doberneck, runner-up in the Purple Prose category:

The wind whispering through the pine trees and the sun reflecting off the surface of Lake Tahoe like a scattering of diamonds was an idyllic setting, while to the south the same sun struggled to penetrate a sky choked with farm dust and car exhaust over Bakersfield, a town spread over the lower San Joaquin Valley like a brown stain on a wino?s trousers, which is where, unfortunately, this story takes place.