The winning entries of the 2010 Bulwer-Lytton contest are available at now . In case you are blissfully ignorant of this event, it is a “whimsical literary competition that challenges entrants to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels.”
Here’s this year’s grand prize winner (to use the term loosely):
“For the first month of Ricardo and Felicity’s affair, they greeted one another at every stolen rendezvous with a kiss–a lengthy, ravenous kiss, Ricardo lapping and sucking at Felicity’s mouth as if she were a giant cage-mounted water bottle and he were the world’s thirstiest gerbil.”
Yikes!
If you are a glutton for punishment, the 2009 results can found at http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/2009.htm , and all the grand prize winners since 1983 are at http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/lyttony.htm.
(reposted without permission from an email from Cathy Lutz–hope she’ll forgive me)