Reduced Bulwer-Lytton

The organizer of the Little Lytton Contest, described here, definitely gets it. Which is to say, of course, that they agree with me: For years, the winners of the "official" Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest have usually written a long, long, self-consciously tedious sentence, with a sudden reversal in the last five words as if the writer simply popped a blood vessel at the wrong moment. They telegraph the joke like a bad prizefighter.

By contrast, what we remember as Bulwer-Lytton's most famous opener, which earned him this notoriety (rightly or wrongly), was a brief seven words: "It was a dark and stormy night."

The truth of the matter, however, is a little more complicated. Those seven words were just an independent clause that began a much more complex sentence:

"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."

Yet, the reason Bulwer-Lytton gets lampooned today is not that long-winded second part; it's the first quick stroke. In fact, most people who get an easy laugh at Bulwer-Lytton's expense (a generation of readers of the comic strip "Peanuts" knew it as a running gag in Snoopy story lines) wouldn't recognize the whole sentence if it rattled their housetops or fiercely agitated their scanty flames.

Also, unlike the Bulwer-Lytton Contest entries, it wasn't a joke, even unintentionally; it probably didn't even sound that bad to the people who read it in 1830. (Lord knows there are modern opening lines that are just as dreadful. Will our descendants see parody contests for Tom Wolfe or Nirvana in the year 2170?) Like his stuff or not, Bulwer-Lytton--who also wrote "The pen is mightier than the sword"--had a gift for phrases that cut to the point, and for that alone he should probably be remembered better.

Which is why it's good to see the Little Lytton Contest recognizing such triumphs of literary hit-and-run as these:

Jennifer stood there, quietly ovulating.

In 3010, the potatoes triumphed.

The pain wouldn't stop, and Vern still had three cats left.

Say what you like, is there a man jack among you who wouldn't at least be a little curious to see what happens next in a story that begins like that? Simpler is usually better.

Along somewhat related lines, Salon.com had an appreciation of Dave Barry this week, after he announced he's going into indefinite retirement from the humor column biz. The author brought out two points that apply here: (1) Barry usually put the funny part as the last word of the sentence, although his sentences weren't usually that long. (2) Barry usually put the funniest sentence at the beginning of the paragraph. That must mean something.

Enjoy. But be quick about it.