San Jose State University recently announced the results of its annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. The contest is named for Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, fondly remembered for a bastardization of the opening words of his 1830 novel Paul Clifford: “It was a dark and stormy night.”

In truth, the novel begins with convoluted lieterary flourish: “A dark and stormy night it was; in torrents fell the rain—except at occasional intervals, when, by a violent gust of wind was it checked, as up the streets it swept, (for in London it is that lies our scene), along the housetops rattling, and the scanty flame of the lamps fiercely agitating, that against the darkness, struggled.”

For 27 years the SJSU English department has accepted long-winded entries in various categories of purple prose and picked the best (er… worst) of the lot. The author’s questionable writing skills are then rewarded with publication and a small pittance (their words not ours).

The overall winner for 2009 is this charming run-on sentence, submitted by David McKenzie of Federal Way, WA..

“Folks say that if you listen real close at the height of the full moon, when the wind is blowin’ off Nantucket Sound from the nor’ east and the dogs are howlin’ for no earthly reason, you can hear the awful screams of the crew of the “Ellie May,” a sturdy whaler Captained by John McTavish; for it was on just such a night when the rum was flowin’ and, Davey Jones be damned, big John brought his men on deck for the first of several screaming contests.”

Fly’s personal favorite was submitted by Eric Rice of Sun Prairie, WI., and won in the Detective category:

“She walked into my office on legs as long as one of those long-legged birds that you see in Florida—the pink ones, not the white ones—except that she was standing on both of them, not just one of them, like those birds, the pink ones, and she wasn’t wearing pink, but I knew right away that she was trouble, which those birds usually aren’t.”

SJI visitors with a fondness for inane writing can check out the Spartan Bulwer-Lytton Contest website (double-meaning there—see, the website is painfully bland, and the SJSU mascot is the Spartan…it’s not funny if Fly has to explain it).