Natasha Romanoff hated pierogies — but more than that, she hated lies.

May 3, 2016 8:07 PM

The 2016 Lyttle Lytton Awards have been announced

From the organizer:
"The annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest challenges entrants to pen the world's most atrocious first line to a novel. Winners — and, for that matter, runners-up and honorable mentions — are generally very long.

I say, bleah. Brevity is the soul of wit, ... So in 2001 I started a contest much like the Bulwer-Lytton, only with entrants limited to 25 words. (This has since been changed to 200 characters.)"

posted by firechicago (35 comments total)

How can you hate pierogies? :(
posted by tobascodagama at 8:33 PM on May 3, 2016 [8 favorites]

I kept my cool until I got to

The cook poured the polenta into the pot like a waterfall of corn and nutrition.

Then I lost it and laughed so hard I cried.
posted by medusa at 9:11 PM on May 3, 2016 [9 favorites]

Medusa -- me too! The cats think I'm insane
posted by janey47 at 9:23 PM on May 3, 2016

Don't sell your cat short, janey47, your cat knows you're insane.
posted by evilDoug at 9:41 PM on May 3, 2016

You know, he always says:

As those who have read previous Lyttle Lytton pages know — because I say it almost every year — when I'm going through the entries, I ask myself, "Does this sound like the beginning of a novel? Is it hilariously bad?" 

But the entries he singles out for praise very, very rarely sound like the beginnings of novels.
posted by kenko at 9:44 PM on May 3, 2016 [2 favorites]

Seems like I usually like the ones that are also-ran.

Her eyes were like deep, green pools of eyeball liquid.
How attractive!
posted by BlueHorse at 9:46 PM on May 3, 2016 [2 favorites]

Ok... This is pretty much my favorite day of the year. This is the Funniest Thing.

I have one strong disagreement with Adam this year, though. He likes Wright Allison's opener: "Yeah, it kicks ass to be living in this high-rent apartment with my girlfriend who’s real hot and I fuck her." because of the parallelism error. But seriously. Isn't this even funnier?:

"Yeah, it kicks ass to be living in this high-rent apartment with my girlfriend who's real hot and who I fuck."
posted by mr_roboto at 9:49 PM on May 3, 2016 [3 favorites]

I agree that many of these do not sound like the first line of novels. But it's not my contest, so that's ok.

The one that made me snort-laugh was this bit of commentary:

(1) It turns out that if you do a search on sentences that contain the words "cum" and "position", most of the results are not about narratology
posted by not that girl at 10:37 PM on May 3, 2016 [4 favorites]

I love that there's a category for "X was Y like Z", a pet peeve of mine. I once read a book, the title wiped from my memory, that had this structure 2 or 3 times a page. I wanted to throw it, but was ultimately sucked in by the bad writing.
posted by bongo_x at 11:22 PM on May 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

Oh hey that's Adam Cadre of photopia etc. who runs that.
posted by juv3nal at 11:50 PM on May 3, 2016

I thought the "calligraphy of combat" one would genuinely make a gripping first sentence for a pulpy novel of tough-guy prose. Think Mike Hammer with added kung fu, and then read on ...
posted by Paul Slade at 1:34 AM on May 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

I came here to quote just exactly that, not that girl. I will be giggling about that for a while.
posted by hippybear at 1:34 AM on May 4, 2016

I once read a book, the title wiped from my memory, that had this structure 2 or 3 times a page.

It's a bit of a tangent, but you just reminded me of an alien-invasion science fiction series I read years ago. First off, the author called his giant insectoid aliens "Saurons", which is just etymologically wrong.

The part that really annoyed me, though, was that almost every other page had a construction like "the Sauron equivalent of a grenade". Is it a small throwable object that explodes after a short delay? Then it's not the "equivalent"...it's a grenade.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 2:04 AM on May 4, 2016 [4 favorites]

Why he gotta diss The Ballad of Lost C'Mell?
posted by kyrademon at 2:28 AM on May 4, 2016 [4 favorites]

Entered, didn't place. I wasn't entirely happy with my entry upon reflection so I can't say that I'm surprised, and I'll fine-tune what I put in for next year.
posted by delfin at 6:14 AM on May 4, 2016

For the record, this is the last sentence of Edward Bulwer-Lytton's Paul Clifford, the novel that began with "It was a dark and stormy night. . ."

How many nothings swelled their author into a sage, ay, a saint, because they were strung together by the old hypocrite nun,—Gravity!
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 6:26 AM on May 4, 2016 [6 favorites]

Old Hypocrite Nuns: band name claimed.
posted by delfin at 7:10 AM on May 4, 2016

I would read the titular pierogy story, but apparently you had me at Natasha.
posted by puddledork at 7:46 AM on May 4, 2016

Why he gotta diss The Ballad of Lost C'Mell?

Seconded! C’Mell is the subject of one of my very favorite sentences in any novel ever:

“She had kissed a thousand men, maybe fifteen hundred.”

Quoting Cordwainer Smith as cluelessly bad writing misses how playful and over-the-top he could be. He knew what the hell he was doing.
posted by miles per flower at 8:04 AM on May 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

Actually, I'm a bit surprised nobody else has called out the descriptive text for the "cucks!" sentence. White supremacists have turned it to novel, shitty uses, but the word itself is a reasonable enough derivation from "cuckold", which of course has an entirely legitimate pedigree dating back centuries. Definitely not fair to compare it with a hideous neologism like "narp".
posted by tobascodagama at 8:29 AM on May 4, 2016

I didn't realize there was a found category! The sleaze paperbacks I collect have got to be the world's richest vein of appalling writing. This actual first sentence from a published novel has long been a favorite of mine:

Nick Violet wrestled with his pajamas and feeling his arms strapped to his body, he listened in cold sweat and awe to an imaginary astrologer, who, with beaming hate, shouted at him, "Now you will die of leukemia in three months!"

The novel ends:

"Oh, no, Nick. The Universe is full of people and Spirits. You just have to have faith and test it," Molly said, watching Nick Violet disappear further and further into the atmosphere or the air or the ether out of Earth.

posted by vathek at 9:32 AM on May 4, 2016 [7 favorites]

"When your hand becomes steel, there is nothing you can’t punch."

This one's actually a good line, though. I mean, it's just the right balance of over-the-top to be pulpy and fun without being ludicrous.

80% of these are legitimately quite bad, but more than a few of them are just the author of the list being cranky.
posted by tobascodagama at 10:32 AM on May 4, 2016

Nick Violet wrestled with his pajamas and feeling his arms strapped to his body, he listened in cold sweat and awe to an imaginary astrologer, who, with beaming hate, shouted at him, "Now you will die of leukemia in three months!"

I... what
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 11:45 AM on May 4, 2016

Tbh, I think "The safest place for the unborn child is in the firmly restrained pouch of the womb." is surprisingly workable. Change "the unborn child" to "a child" and fix up "firmly restrained pouch of the" to something better or maybe just drop it all together -- "The safest place for a child is in the womb."
posted by mhum at 12:45 PM on May 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

more than a few of them are just the author of the list being cranky

Oh, he's VERY cranky. You should read his movie reviews sometime!
posted by zeusianfog at 12:54 PM on May 4, 2016

Eh, no thanks. I'm cranky enough by myself, I don't need a bunch of other cranky people in my life telling me how cranky I ought to be about things.
posted by tobascodagama at 1:29 PM on May 4, 2016

"When your hand becomes steel, there is nothing you can’t punch."

The problem for me with this line, is that it conjures up the image of someone who would punch literally everything - trees, skyscrapers, buses, clotheslines, elephants, cheese - were it not for the fact that his fists couldn't take the stress. His punching dreams thwarted, he dreams of the day his hands become steel, and he can finally give everything the punching it deserves.
posted by Grangousier at 1:42 PM on May 4, 2016 [4 favorites]

See, so it's evocative.
posted by RobotHero at 2:02 PM on May 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

You know what? I think even the last one, "There’s something going on, and it’s bad," could be pretty workable, depending on the book. Like, maybe if it was a historical, light fiction about our current election season...
posted by mhum at 4:29 PM on May 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

The problem for me with this line, is that it conjures up the image of someone who would punch literally everything - trees, skyscrapers, buses, clotheslines, elephants, cheese - were it not for the fact that his fists couldn't take the stress. His punching dreams thwarted, he dreams of the day his hands become steel, and he can finally give everything the punching it deserves.

It's like you know me.
posted by bongo_x at 5:28 PM on May 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

The problem for me with this line, is that it conjures up the image of someone who would punch literally everything - trees, skyscrapers, buses, clotheslines, elephants, cheese - were it not for the fact that his fists couldn't take the stress. His punching dreams thwarted, he dreams of the day his hands become steel, and he can finally give everything the punching it deserves.

I think this is essentially the plot of Minecraft
posted by NMcCoy at 5:42 PM on May 4, 2016 [4 favorites]

The problem for me with this line, is that it conjures up the image of someone who would punch literally everything...

I don't understand what the word "problem" is doing in this sentence.
posted by tobascodagama at 7:51 PM on May 4, 2016 [2 favorites]

The sleaze paperbacks I collect have got to be the world's richest vein of appalling writing.

Years ago, I found a book in a thrift store called "A Hard Man is Good to Find". One line just burned itself into my brain.

"I needed a drink, and I needed to piss. I headed for the bathroom. I poured myself a glass of Johnnie Walker, and took it in for company".
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 1:39 AM on May 5, 2016

I think the funniest part about the "womb" line is not thinking about it as a novel's first sentence, but the fact that it comes from a government website on vehicle safety. It makes me imagine that a parent was wondering, "huh, where should I put my fetus when I'm driving? Should I put it in a car seat?"

In context, it's trying to make the point that pregnant women should wear seatbelts, but it's still pretty excruciating. The paragraph goes on to the following line delivered with zero irony: "If the unborn child’s mother is injured or killed, the child's chances of survival will be considerably reduced."
posted by phoenixy at 2:23 AM on May 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

This year made me laugh harder that the last several. I didn't place (can't even remember what I submitted this year, so that's probably fine) but My friend Aaron got a mention for something he found that I insisted he subbmit, so I'm taking that one-off vicarious pride and running with it.
posted by Navelgazer at 8:07 AM on May 5, 2016