Proudly Writing Badly

The English professor sat there thinking, alone on a dark night in 1981, as nights were then and are now even without storms, which are dark too. He pondered how to get students writing more and thinking about good writing and bad writing, although spoken language is good too, the professor would have hastened to add if asked that night, which he wasn’t.

The result: the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, which celebrates the best of bad writing, which is to say overwriting that causes visual hernias if you’re not careful, which some aren’t. Scott Rice’s contest has grown from three entries to many thousands. “Frankly,” said the San Jose State English teacher, “I didn’t want to read a lot of bad writing. So we limited each entry to one overloaded sentence.”

The contest honors, if that’s the correct word, which it isn’t -- mocks would be better -- a 19th century English author with an overloaded name, Edward George Bulwer-Lytton. He opened his 1830 novel “Paul Clifford” with the immortal words: “It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents -- except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.”

The other day, Mariann Simms of Wetumpka, Ala., won -- if that’s the word, which it is -- the 2003 contest with her 71-word masterpiece beginning: “They had but one last remaining night together, so they embraced each other as that two-flavor entwined string cheese that is orange and yellowish-white.... “

This is the birth bicentennial of Bulwer-Lytton, who was a celebrated author up there with Charles Dickens until one bright, sunny day long after the Briton died (Bulwer-Lytton not Dickens, though he died too) when no one was looking, Charlie Brown’s dog Snoopy plagiarized “Paul Clifford” from atop his doghouse (Snoopy’s not Bulwer-Lytton’s).

For those who cherish words, using, abusing and playing with them (and why else would you still be reading this?), the bad writing contest (www.sjsu.edu/depts/english/2003.htm) provides delicious moments of laughter. Rice notices changes over time -- more imitative entries, more truly bad writers pretending to be good writers pretending to be bad. All work receives the same reply: “Your entry has arrived and will receive the treatment it deserves.”

Rice clearly enjoys his work, even late at night. “I enjoy my work,” Rice said, “even late at night.” Suddenly, somewhere outside a dog barked, not too far away probably but not too close either because the bark was faint as if the dog was at some distance or perhaps hiding under a blanket nearby pretending to be far away.