Sincerest Form of Parody Wins Praise and a Trip

They wrote words. Long words, short words, English and barely Spanish words. Words strung together with the staccato tapping tempo of typing, words that appear on Page 28. Last year, Newport Beach veterinarian Dave Curtin only brooded about being a writer over lonely cups of coffee.

This week, he was hoisting grappa and eating pasta with die-hard Hemingway aficionados at Harry’s Bar & American Grill in Century City--the object of praise and honor as the winner of that restaurant chain’s 10th International Imitation Hemingway Competition. With help from his wife , Diana, Curtin beat out 1,783 writers and 24 finalists from around the world in producing the funniest parody of the master of terse prose and machismo.

“We were encouraged, thrilled and flattered,” said Curtin, 36, who writes as a hobby and has been published only once, in a local newspaper contest. Judges said the Curtins are the first couple to win the contest and may be the first winners who were not already professional or serious writers.

Curtin said their winning entry, “In Another Contra,” parodied Hemingway’s “In Another Country” as well as every other Hemingway novel in which “bunches of revolutionaries run around the mountains carrying machine guns, talking in Spanish and doing macho things.”

He said they hoped to gain a competitive edge by writing something “topical” about Latin America. “The man,” they wrote, “was going to settle for the stinking seaside bodega and that was bad and he would hate himself later. He spat in disgust--carefully downwind, as the Patagonian gypsy had taught him--then he kicked in the front door.”

Curtin said he and his wife, 27, an administrative assistant with the Koll Co., spent a month bouncing ideas off each other, trading gags and writing and rewriting their page on their home computer. It includes groaner puns such as, “I seek the light also,” said the man. “As long as it tastes great and is not too filling.”

The couple also had entered “Kindergarten of Eden,” a parody of Hemingway’s “Garden of Eden,” which Curtin called almost a parody in itself. Curtin said he had read most but not all of Hemingway’s works but actually prefers Hemingway’s contemporary Beryl Markham, author of “West With the Night,” written “in a kind of style that Hemingway envied.”

Until the last minute, judges were deadlocked, 3 to 3, with half voting for “Across the Mall and Into the White House,” a political entry by third-time finalist Daniel White, a lawyer and writer from Washington, said judge Bernice Kert, author of “The Hemingway Women.”

Sample from White’s entry: “The President finished his prune juice. It tasted fine--like prunes, only more liquidy, which is how it should be when you are with someone you love.”

Kert said the judges were eventually won over by the Curtins’ freshness, use of Spanish and obvious literary knowledge, such as the punch line to a complex pun involving the man’s maquina, or gun:

“The barman reached for the gun but recoiled when it growled at him. The man eyed his host warily, wondering if he took Visa. ‘My weapon is a Deus X, model 20.’ ‘Ah, a Deus X maquina. A miraculous and convenient device, eh?”’

“They liked the Latin,” Curtin said about his reference to deus ex machina --a literary device, which miraculously resolves plots.

In addition to Kert, judges were Digby Diehl, CBS TV entertainment editor; Jack Smith, Los Angeles Times columnist; authors Barnaby Conrad and Ray Bradbury, and Hal Riney, an advertising executive from San Francisco. They started reading finalists’ entries at 4 p.m. Monday. At 6:45 p.m., the Curtins received the news in a phone call from Chuck Frank, president of Spectrum Foods Division of American Restaurant Groups, owner of the Harry’s Bar & Grill chain of 13 California restaurants.

By the time they arrived for the celebration, the judges were “pretty happy and cordial,” Curtin said.

For their prize, the Curtins will receive dinner at Harry’s Bar & American Grill in Florence, Italy, as well as round-trip air fare.