You probably never hear of Victorian novelist Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton, but you certainly know the opening line of his novel Paul Clifford from 1830 – “It was a dark and stormy night.” San Jose State University holds a contest in bad writing and this year it was won by Garrison Spik, a 41-year-old communications director and writer, with this opening from his non-existent novel:
Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped ‘Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J.’
So, here’s the thing. What you have just read is truly terrible, awful writing, but it’s so remarkably good at being terrible that it’s fantastic. This is mediocrity at its best, and it brought tears to my eyes. Not the horrible writing, but that a California state university sponsors a competition in mediocrity. A genuinely American competition. More American than baseball.
You’ve all been to bookstores and browsed through the bestsellers. This kind of writing sells. If it sells, then it’s fulfilling our capitalist dreams. Mediocrity incarnate. In fact, Garrison Spik, short of having a bestseller of your own, you have come as close to the American Dream as anyone (meaning, not that close – you still need to write that bestseller).
No related posts.
Posts
One Comment
I’m starting to get it.
You find something amusing, ironic or stupid (or all three) in the news and then write about it and find some vague way to categorize it as “mediocrity”.
However, if something is terrible, and yet very good at being terrible, then clearly it’s superlative nature on both ends of the spectrum make it anything but mediocre… unless you’re averaging out.
OR… unless it is the blog post itself that is intended to be mediocre, in which case, how ironic, amusing and stupid. What a very run of the mill job you’ve done. I give you a C for lack of any real effort.