distinction as world's worst writer
RACHEL KONRAD, Associated Press Writer Tuesday, July 15, 2003
(07-15) 16:56 PDT SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) --
A lizard lover from Alabama won an annual contest celebrating bad writing with a ghastly simile comparing doomed romance to processed cheese.
Mariann Simms of Wetumpka, Ala., won $250 in the 22nd Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, a parody honoring the writer of the worst beginning to an imaginary novel.
"They had but one last remaining night together, so they embraced each other as tightly as that two-flavor entwined string cheese that is orange and yellowish-white, the orange probably being a bland Cheddar and the white ... Mozzarella, although it could possibly be Provolone or just plain American, as it really doesn't taste distinctly dissimilar from the orange, yet they would have you believe it does by coloring it differently," Simms wrote.
The contest, sponsored by San Jose State University, is named after the oft-mocked British novelist Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, whose 1830 novel "Paul Clifford" began, "It was a dark and stormy night."
Simms, 42, who purchased an Australian Bearded Dragon from a reptile breeder last weekend, took a break from feeding crickets to the juvenile lizard, named Zippo, to discuss the epiphany behind her winning entry -- which, like the majority of pathetic ramblings submitted to the contest, was characterized by ridiculous whipsawing between unrelated concepts, as well as a profundity of commas and an extreme verbosity, which manifested itself in sentences frequently exceeding 50 words, many with multiple restrictive and nonrestrictive clauses.
"My kids eat twisted cheese, and I don't want the cheese people to sue me for this, but basically the white part and the orange parts just don't taste any differently, and that got me to thinking about lovers entwined," said Simms, an amateur comedy writer who has won four T-shirts in David Letterman contests.
San Jose State English professor Scott Rice, who runs the contest, praised Simms' mockery of a literary faux-pas.
"It's an example of a writer who gets off task -- you start off with steamy sex and end up with stinky cheese," Rice said Tuesday, when he announced the winners.
The 2003 contest, which attracted thousands of entries worldwide, was unique for its large number of entries from Americans with military connections, Rice said.
Simms is the wife of an Air Force retiree. Runner-up John Dotson, whose painfully putrid prose described the font of a "V" formation of geese, is a naval officer. Two "dishonorable mentions" went to veterans.
"It suggests we have some level of literacy and humor in the U.S. military," Rice said.
Many entries evoked processed foods -- possibly reflecting America's widening girth.
Albert T. Keyack of Ambler, Penn., described similarities between lips and garnishes of Shirley Temple cocktails.
"Bill shifted uncomfortably on his stool looking at the topless blonde bombshell on the bar, but the first thing that struck him was the pulchritude of the exotic dancer's lips, which glowed like maraschino cherries, that is, pitted cherries macerated in an almond-flavored syrup then heated to boiling in an alum-containing brine full of carcinogenic red dyes," Keyack wrote.
The winner of the "Dark and Stormy Night" category referred to a high-protein snack.
"It was almost a dark and stormy night -- not dark or stormy enough to be called that but just the kind of sweaty night that makes your shirt stick to your back and make you wish you were still at home with the air conditioning and eating pig skins and watching the Martha Stewart trial on TV.," wrote Sarah Harris of White Rock, N.M. |
