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Prof. Sue Fondrie wins 2011 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest

© Associated Press
Tue Jul 26, 2011 11:30am PDT

SAN JOSÉ, Calif. (AP) — A sentence in which tiny birds and the English language are both slaughtered took top honors Monday in an annual bad writing contest.

Sue Fondrie of Oshkosh, Wis., won the 2011 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest for her sentence comparing forgotten memories to dead sparrows, said San José State University Prof. Scott Rice. The contestant asks writers to submit the worst possible opening sentences to imaginary novels.

Fondrie wrote: “Cheryl’s mind turned like the vanes of a wind-powered turbine, chopping her sparrow-like thoughts into bloody pieces that fell onto a growing pile of forgotten memories.”

The University of Wisconsin professor’s 26-word sentence is the shortest grand prize winner in the contest’s 29-year history, Rice said.

Contest judges liked that Fondrie’s entry reminded them of the 1960s hit song “The Windmills of Your Mind,” which Rice described as an image that “made no more sense then than it does now.”

The contest is named after British author Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, whose 1830 novel Paul Clifford begins with the oft-quoted opening line: “It was a dark and stormy night.”

© United Feature Syndicate, Inc.

Lord Edward George Bulwer-Lytton | MFA in Creative Writing candidate Snoopy

“It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents — except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.”
—  Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford (1830)

The contest solicits entries in a variety of categories. John Doble of New York won in the historical fiction category:

“Napoleon’s ship tossed and turned as the emperor, listening while his generals squabbled as they always did, splashed the tepid waters in his bathtub.”

To take the prize for best purple prose, Mike Pedersen of North Berwick, Maine, relied on a thesaurus’-worth of synonyms:

“As his small boat scudded before a brisk breeze under a sapphire sky dappled with cerulean clouds with indigo bases, through cobalt seas that deepened to navy nearer the boat and faded to azure at the horizon, Ian was at a loss as to why he felt blue.”

Related: Vampire author Charlaine Harris talks about her job

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Delve into the Bulwer-Lytton Awards (including Dishonorable Mentions) at Facebook

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Al Young and Jimmy Lynn at the Berkeley Bowl, circa 2005

REFLECTIONS-IN-PROGRESS

Late in the afternoon of July 14, 2011, the singer Dima telephoned to sadly tell me our pal Jimmy Lynn (officially James C. Lynn) had died. His landlord, Chris Martin, who lives next door to Jimmy’s West Street apartment in South Berkeley, had found Dima’s phone number on the floor next to Jimmy’s body and phoned her. Chris told me he had noticed a Whole Foods paper grocery bag, which had been sitting in front of the door for several days. It was actually a bag containing a carton of chicken soup, two squares of cornbread, a bottle of water and receipts for two parking tickets that Jimmy had asked me to take care of. Seeing that the food had spoiled, Chris disposed of the bag. When Dima’s call reached me, I was sitting in my car parked outside Venezia, a popular Italian restaurant on University Avenue. I drove right over to Jimmy’s in time to see the Alameda County Coroner’s van and a Berkeley Police car in front of my friend’s residence. I rushed up his steps and was greeted by a policewoman and the coroner’s office agent. They asked if I knew the man. I told them yes, that I was probably his only friend. For how long? For more than 50 years. Does he have any kin? No. Would you be willing, the policewoman asked, to help arrange a funeral or burial for him? I’ll do what I can, I said. He always told me he wants to be buried beside his mother. Years ago they purchased a twin crypt. Where is the cemetery? At first I thought it was Chapel of the Chimes, but it was Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland …

Photo: Al Young

Seated beside jazz singer Dima, Jimmy Lynn swaps stories with his old friend Sandy Simon at the memorial service for Jim Johnson, Jimmy and Al Young’s longtime buddy | Berkeley 2007

Photo: Carl Martineau

Al Young, Bobby Theseeker (a.k.a. Jimmy Lynn), and Diane Di Pisa at the March 2009 opening of Berkeley in the Sixties, an exhibit of black and white photographs of Berkeley’s lively Telegraph Avenue denizens taken by the late Elio Di Pisa, who managed the Caffè Mediterraneum from the 1960s through the 1990s. When Al and Jimmy met in the summer of 1960, Jimmy — encouraged by the British physicist and novelist C.P. Snow — was still writing and editing his never-published novel, a 1000-page trilogy. Set largely in Mexico, the book’s thrill- and truth-seeking narrator is Bobby Theseeker (pronounced THÉH-seeker). Jimmy Lynn, who kept a low profile, asked me to not identify him directly when this photo first went up at AlYoung.org in the photo-feature Spring in This World of Poor Mutts.

Al Young

Jimmy Lynn tinkering in the backyard of his previous South Berkeley home

Photo: Sandra Simon

Jimmy Lynn in 2010 about to celebrate his 86th birthday at a brunch hosted by Sandra Simon at her Buddhist home close to the Golden Gate Bridge

a Kindness of Strangers snapshot

Al Young, Sandy Simon, Jimmy Lynn, and the Golden Gate Bridge bask in the light of an affection decades deep | Spring 2010

To be continued. Because he has no apparent next of kin and, despite my continuous nagging, did not leave a will, Jimmy Lynn, a retired longshoreman and writer, may likely be classified as an indigent by the County, which will cremate then bury his remains in Napa in a kind of pauper’s grave. His belongings may be plundered and his bank account and savings confiscated by the State. This is an outrage to the many people who, for much of his life, have known, cared about and loved this eccentric, intelligent, hard-working man. And so I have decided to write at length about my friend Jimmy Lynn: Alabama-born, Utah-reared, New York-seasoned, and California-tempered. Consider this start preliminary.

– Al Young
28 July 2011

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Al Young’s beloved Aunt Mae
December 7, 1920-June 15, 2011

Photos: Al Young

At Detroit’s Westlawn Cememtery, Rosie Woods, a neighbor and friend of Mae Varner, waves her slow goodbye.

Aunt Mae of the 1970s, the 1960s, and early 1950

Celebrating her 85th birthday | Detroit, December 2006

Photos courtesy Al Young Archives

My love said take
All my books,

You can take all my clothes,
My hats, my shoes, my gloves,

You can have my watchband,
Take my sifters …

–Excerpted from “Romantic” by Dara Wier
(click here to enjoy the whole poem)

MAE OLA VARNER

December 7, 1920 – June 15,  2011

In loving memory

Ninety minutes into June 15, 2011, Mae Ola Varner drew her last breath at the Southfield Michigan home of Philip and Patricia Varner, her beloved nephew and niece by marriage.

Top L-R Harold Varner, Patricia Varner, Camari E. Frame | Bottom L-R Karon Jackson (Mae Varner’s god-daughter), children, friend, and husband Robert Jackson

At her request, no elaborate service was held. On the rainy morning of Tuesday, June 21st, her casket was lifted and eased inside the mausoleum wall housing the twin crypt, where her remains rest next to those of her late husband at Detroit’s Westlawn Cemetery.

Christened Maeola Campbell on December 7, 1920 in Pachuta, Mississippi, she was the fourth of six daughters and the seventh of nine children born to Jordan and Lillian Campbell, dedicated, well- respected farmers.

Forever versatile, focused and curious about the world beyond her tiny village in Clarke County Mississippi, she distinguished herself early as a high school basketball champion and as an outstanding, all- around student. Mae Campbell won 4-H Club prizes for horticulture, animal husbandry, needlepoint and quilting. Upon graduation, her office skills landed her a job away from the family farm.

Right up to her last days, she read continuously, kept up with film, pop culture and politics. Fats Waller and Billie Holiday, revered by others, never impressed her. But she thought Duke Ellington the greatest composer and musician who ever lived. Denzel Washington was her screen actor, and she was a passionate, feisty supporter of President Barack Obama.

In the 1940s, she emigrated to Michigan, settling in Detroit, where she worked for many years as a supervising seamstress for a drapery company.  In later life she worked as a certified nutritionist who traveled to low-income communities throughout Wayne County to explain and demonstrate the health benefits of maintaining a balanced diet.

In Detroit she met and fell in love with James Prince (Pete) Varner, a service employee of the Michigan Central Railroad. For more than 40 years, their marriage flourished and prospered. Following his death in 1991, she never again considered marriage.

Long a member of Bethel A.M.E. Church, she continued to devote herself to charitable activities, much of it church- and community-related. Long concerned about Africa and its future, she donated generously to World Vision, among other organizations. She championed the poor and needy, fighting for working people and fighting against social injustice, world hunger, homelessness, and ignorance.

Mae Varner was a genuine patriot, the sister of two brothers who had served and fought in World War Two, then found themselves Jim Crowed at home. She responded ardently to the appeals of veterans groups like Paralyzed Veterans of America. To the very end, she devoted herself to the loving memory of her husband Pete.

Mae Varner is survived by her only son Jesse Earl Campbell, his wife Mary, three grandchildren: Tiya, Lance and Kobie; two step-children: James Varner, Jr., Margene Willis of Plano, Texas, and one goddaughter: Karon Jackson. She leaves behind a host of nieces and grand-nieces, nephews and grand-nephews, and generations of cousins. She also leaves behind the fellow Bethel A.M.E. parishioners she adored and their pastor the Rev. Alfred Johnson, her Lunch Bunch sisters, her condo co-op neighbors at Cherboneau Place, Detroit, and countless admirers and well-wishers.

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Tribute forthcoming

Page under construction

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Courtesy photo

Chance-taker

Emotion voyager

Street-strutter

Contemporary Spirit

Untamed Proud Poet

Rough healer
He is His

— Miss Gwendolyn Brooks

more from Marlene Goldman

A Very Long Post About the Extraordinary Artist and Poet and Storyteller and Singer and Philosopher and Influential Activist and Fighter of Inner Demons Gilbert Scott-Heron

Last week Gil Scott-Heron’s death came and went and then his name disappeared into the internet abyss. He seemed vaguely familiar to a lot of people but aside from his song-poem, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” few really knew his work. As it turns out, the ones who knew the most about him were not the consumers of music so much as artists and performers and writers and people who make things. Gil Scott-Heron was what people call an “artists’ artist.” It is a designation given only to the rare few who make art with a high degree of integrity despite whatever difficulties might plague them – poverty & racism to name a few ….

Read the rest of Michael Young’s tribute to Gil Scott-Heron at SF MOMA’s blog

Courtesy gilscottheron.net

GIL SCOTT-HERON, the poet and recording artist whose syncopated spoken style and mordant critiques of politics, racism and mass media in pieces like The Revolution Will Not Be Televised made him a notable voice of black protest culture in the 1970s, has died in Manhattan.

He was 62, a longtime resident of Harlem and reportedly HIV positive.

Scott-Heron often bristled at the suggestion that his work had prefigured rap. ”I don’t know if I can take the blame for it,” he said last year. He preferred to call himself a ”bluesologist,” drawing on the traditions of blues, jazz and Harlem Renaissance poetics.

– Ben Sisario, Sydney Morning Herald

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A courtesy clickable

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, 1970

Home is Where the Hatred Is, 1971

Winter in America, 1974

The Bottle, 1976

Racetrack in France, 1977

Thom Jurek’s AllMusic.com review of I’m New Here (2010), Gil Scott-Heron’s first and last new album in 16 years

“Gil Scott-Heron, whose music reflected black anger, dies at 62″ | Cristian Salazar, Washington Post/AP, May 29, 2011

© Anthony Barboza/Getty Images

Gil Scott-Heron in Harlem, 2010

“Gil Scot-Heron, Poet and Musician, Has Died” | Daoud Tyler-Ameen, NPR’s The Record, May 27, 2011

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Design: Niya C. Sisk

“If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.”
– Mother Teresa

Newly reborn, Elizabeth Hack’s inspiring website – San Francisco Peace and Hope — takes its cue from the way we breathe. Inhale, exhale; one breath, one death – the two go together like sleeping and waking, or time and eternity. What dissolves? What lasts? “There is no ahead,” the ancient poet Rumi whispered, reminding us that the only time we have is now. As stubbornly as we rewind or fast-forward to access a remembered past or an imagined future, we experience nothing ongoing until we hit play, which always brings us home to the moment unfolding. Deathless truths, a.k.a. eternal verities – forever arousing, ever virginal – get transmitted and recycled by way of poetry, storytelling, painting, sculpture, music, drama and dance. With this first breath, everything begins. For an instantaneous down-to-earth take on peace and hope, ask any baker of sourdough bread about starters. As we may label every episode in life chapter one, so every post to this elegant, survival-loving site will always seem the first.

— fragment from One Two-Step Foreword by Al Young

Click here to go to the original at San Francisco Peace and Hope

WHO WE ARE

San Francisco Peace and Hope
PO Box 8057
Berkeley, CA 94707

Advisor
Al Young, California poet laureate emeritus

Web Designer
Niya C. Sisk, MFA, Ritual Labs, Principal, Creative Director
Visit Niya’s Place

Founder/Editor
Elizabeth Hack

Elizabeth Hack, Niya C. Sisk, and Al Young. December 18, 2010

About Elizabeth Hack

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