Writer is quahog wild about bad literature

Mike Mayfield thought the sentence was pretty bad when he wrote it. But he knew it could be worse, so hewenttowork on making it so. This is how it wound up: “Justin was happy, like a clam at high tide, but abruptly ending his musings he recalled he had every reason to be happy (in his own small way) because he was a quahog and it was the highest of tides, and he squirted with delight.”

First things first. According to Merriam-Webster, a quahog is “a type of large clam that is eaten as food.” Those last two words, I guess, are to differentiate quahogs from large clams eaten as something other than food.

Quahog(usewhateverpronunciation works in your mouth) also is a sentence-stopper, a word that interrupts any kind of reading rhythm. That’s a bad thing, unless you’re talking about the BulwerLytton Fiction Contest, and that’s what we’re talking about here.

Mayfield, 64, of Austin, Texas, recently won the children’s literature category of the annual competition that, according to honcho Scott Rice, a retired English and comparative lit professor at San Jose State University, “challenges entrants to compose bad opening sentences to imaginary novels.”

The contest, in its 32nd year, is named for Victorian novelist George Edward Bulwer-Lytton who opened “Paul Clifford,” an 1830 novel, with the famous “It was a dark and stormy night,” which, according to Rice, was lifted from somebody else’s work.

This year’s top Bulwer-Lytton prize went to Elizabeth Dorfman of Bainbridge Island, Wash. “In keeping with the bignitude, high dignity and general importance of the competition,” Rice reports, “the grand prize winner receives a pittance — about $150.”

Here’s Dorfman’s even-worsethan-all-the-rest winning sentence:

“When the dead moose floated into view the famished crew cheered — this had to mean land! — but Captain Walgrove, flintyeyed and clear headed thanks to the starvation cleanse in progress, gave fateful orders to remain on the original course and await the appearance of a second and confirming moose.”

The contest gets thousands of entries each year. Mayfield, a retired IBM employee, is a frequent entrant. He’s earned sev- eral runner-up awards, but this was his first win. It came with a slightly tweaked version of previous entries.

“I first entered the sentence in the 2011 contest, annually resubmitting it with minor edits to economize the wording so that it flowed more smoothly,” he said, leading up to what, to me, was the game-changer that elevated the sentence to first place: “In this year’s entry, I changed to ‘quahog’ from the more general word ‘clam.’” Genius! This is the only writing Mayfield does these days. He calls it a “diversion from learning to play the five-string banjo.”

“I’ve written technical manuals in my former career, but those are the opposite of creative writing,” he said.

Though entitled to do so, May- field’s not gloating over his victory. He noted there was no runner-up in the children’s literature category, a fact that led him to this conclusion: “I suspect that I won by default. But a win’s a win; pass that trophy over here.”

(There’s no actual trophy, just the satisfaction of a doing a good job of writing a bad sentence. No money, either.)

The obvious question: Ever thought about progressing to the second sentence?

“No, I haven’t,” Mayfield replied. “After all, how can a story about a clam be anything other than the worst thing you’ve ever read?”

Good point. But if it were about a quahog ...