Good readin'

2004 Results: "An international literary parody contest, the competition honors the memory (if not the reputation) of Victorian novelist Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873). The goal of the contest is childishly simple: entrants are challenged to submit bad opening sentences to imaginary novels. Although best known for 'The Last Days of Pompeii' (1834), which has been made into a movie three times, originating the expression 'the pen is mightier than the sword,' and phrases like 'the great unwashed' and 'the almighty dollar,' Bulwer-Lytton opened his novel Paul Clifford (1830) with the immortal words that the 'Peanuts' beagle Snoopy plagiarized for years, 'It was a dark and stormy night.'"