Paul Clifford (I can never remeber the author’s name). If so, is the entire book bad, or just the beginning? And as a follow-up, almost all well known novels are thought of as being at least good- what are some well known novels that are real stinkers? (I mean those that are just poorly written, not those that are well done but you didn’t like the ending, etc.)
Apparently you can read it on Gutenberg:
An ENTIRE Bulwer-Lytton book? You do know they didn’t name that contest after him accidentally, right? My wife did wade through all of “The Last Days of Pompeii” but I don’t think anybody has read all of “Paul Clifford” for 150 years. I suspect even the Project Gutenberg editors had to do it piecemeal.
I would like to point out that some nights ARE darker than others. Especially moonless, cloudy nights.
Not that I’ll take the effort to read Bulwer-Lytton. But I’ve enjoyed works by other Victorians perhaps considered “outdated.” I devoured the H Rider Haggard collection at home when I was a kid.
And there are Lovecraft fans on the board. Talk about “purple prose”!
I’d like to point out that, not only does the Bulwer-Lytton book start out that way, but so does Madelyn L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time. I haven’t read the Bulwer-Lytton book, but I’ve read A Wrinkle in Time.
Back in the late 1960s they published a hardcover version of Snoopy’s It was a Dark and Story Night, complete with the cover he described (submarine and all). I read that one, too.
“The night was sultry.”
In any case, “It was a dark and stormy night” is not automatically a bad opening line (other than a fact that it’s been tagged as such). It depends on where the story goes next.
For instance, “It was a dark and stormy night on Jupiter” works pretty well.
True, but
does not.
Tt doesn’t make for good reading I agree, but it does sort of paint a good mental picture at least.
The key to reading Vic Lit is to do it aloud. Do the asides aside, pause for commas (they are there for a reason, surprisingly enough, not randomly strewn as they appear now; think of them as stage directions), change your tone for dependent clauses, act out the characters, and, when you get to the end of a chapter, put the book away for a week, as if it were serialized. Those books were not written to be read silently.
Stephen Leacock
Right. It’s not that it’s a bad opening line; the joke is that Snoopy keeps trying to build a whole novel around that one good line.
But…but…I want to know about the wending of the way that night…(see? bad fiction has lots of narrative drive). heh. And hello, stranger! 
Snoopy was a fabulous writer once he got past his writer’s block.
I love the way it all comes together in the end.
Read the rest of the book. Heck, I only quoted HALF of the first paragraph. Bulwer-Lytton could go on for VOLUMES.
And what is wrong with narrative drive, Miss Modernist?
Nothing – but it is not the only way to go.
Many years ago, I spent several nights in my mother’s old bedroom on the second floor of her ancestral home, a simple farmhouse a mile from the northern coast of Maine. The bed and mattress were at least 60 years old, the wallpaper was faded, and there was no electricity upstairs. It was like stepping back in time. On the nightstand was The Last Days of Pompeii, a very old volume with yellow leaves. I read a few chapters every night by lamplight.
NJ_Kef- that sounds awesome- I am jealous right now (seriously, no joke).
Kind of like the deadliest joke in the world, eh?
Spider Robinson also began one of his novels with the line.