Bad Fiction Contests - Faux Faulkner - Bulwer-Lytton Contest

Thom Wilkins

All - The Never Ending Sentences thread reminded me of the Bad Fiction Contests.

(We should have one for VO!) ...Give it a go .

Here would be my entry... "A Dark and Sultry Night on the Mississippi. - by THOM"

Background: "The Annual Faux Faulkner Contest attracts hundreds of entries from around the world, each attempting to mimic the unmistakable style, themes, characters, or plots from Faulkner’s works in a short-short story.

A way to pass the time on dark and stormy nights - The Bulwer-Lytton Contest"

http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/
http://www.mcsr.olemiss.edu/~egjbp/faulkner/faux.html

Diane Havens · Posted: Wed May 28, 2008, 21:33 (GMT) Post subject:

This is wonderfully bad writing, Thom -- actually the way you deliver it, it doesn't sound half bad though. So that's undoes it, doesn't it?

I think for women it would be more fun to parody the writing style of Jane Austen. She can be very annoying -- I know she really bothered Mark Twain.

My favorite put down for her is this quotation:
"I haven't any right to criticise books, and I don't do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticise Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Everytime I read 'Pride and Prejudice' I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone."

Thom Wilkins

Yes, Diane - it is bad - but to deliver it not quite so, is the trick... Here is the "Dark and Sultry" text.

Now Twain had a way with words, one of my fav. authors....

"It was a dark moonless sultry night upon the banks of the Mississippi as the June bugs flitted about to the night songs of the cicadas rippling the very air reaching the cautioned ears, watchful eyes and tense bodies of the small group on the other side searching for any indication of the approaching raft calling an end to their long vigil on the muddy banks leaving their legs cold and numb from standing so long on the rivers edge waiting for a sound, a ripple, a glimmer of a paddle or pole pushing the tiny, almost invisible raft ever inch ward closer and closer to the freedom promised by that brave and dangerous journey taken upon so many nights ago by those upon the raft tasting the night air scented with the sweet nectar of the wild honeysuckle growing on the banks before them, in the back of their throats as they dared not breath too loudly less they be heard by their pursuers and captured before arriving at the other side.." by Thom Wilkins

Diane Havens · Posted: Thu May 29, 2008, 02:00 (GMT) Post subject:

You know, Thom -- it reminds me of a poetry read, when sentences go on forever like this. Poetry that has no real grammatical structure forces you to group the words into a stream of consciousness sense pattern. It gets into a rhythm and you listen to that instead of the literal meaning of the words. So, in that way, you can make even run on sentences make perfect sense -- that is, in a non-linear sort of way. A poem I love to read is T. S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Proofrock." In fact, all of Eliot's poetry is great practice to read.

And Mark Twain -- yes. There's a skilled story teller. And a colorful character himself.