Bulwer-Lytton and the Art of Bad (Travel) Writing

Travel Blog  •  Michael Yessis  •  06.30.09 | 11:00 AM ET

It’s Bulwer-Lytton time again. The winner of the best intentionally awful opening sentence of a novel this year is David McKenzie, who sets his scene off Nantucket Sound:

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.

Among the other winners with a travely vibe, Dr. Sarah Cockram, who won the Historical Fiction category:

The Cunard “Carinthia” glided through the starry waters of the Bering Sea, 843 passengers aboard, including Harriet Dobbs, resignedly single for over a decade, while a nautical mile due west slunk the K-18 submarine, under the command of lonely Ukrainian Captain First Rank Nikolai Shevchenko: ships that passed in the night (although the second technically a boat).

Joe Dykes took a dishonorable mention for this description of a train ride:

I awoke in my sleeper on the way from Amsterdam to Rotterdam, my nightmare riven by a train of thought that abruptly stopped me in my tracks with cataclysmic, explosive, and yet equal and opposing force, like a train on its way from Rotterdam to Amsterdam; then I realized I was on the wrong train and headed for Rotterdam, instead of Amsterdam.

Eric Stoveken’s portrait of post-snowstorm Manhattan was victorious in the Purple Prose category:

The gutters of Manhattan teemed with the brackish slurry indicative of a significant though not incapacitating snowstorm three days prior, making it seem that God had tripped over Hoboken and spilled his smog-flavored slurpie all over the damn place.

Here are all the horrible winners.

Tags: Travel Writing, Tres Loco, Literary Travel


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