# It Was A Dark And Stormy Night

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-was-a-dark-and-stormy-night/410174>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [July 1, 2007, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-was-a-dark-and-stormy-night/410174 "2007-07-01T23:49:01Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 10\
**Page:** 2

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Scuba\_Ben](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/278dde/32.png) [@Scuba\_Ben](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scuba_Ben)\
**Post date:** [July 2, 2007, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-was-a-dark-and-stormy-night/410174/21 "2007-07-02T15:08:37Z")

</div>

[QUOTE=glee]  
There are two kinds of people: those who say there are two kinds of people and those who don’t. 🙂

There are two kinds of people: those who say there are two kinds of people and those who like to take the opposite view. :smack:

There are two kinds of people: those who say there are two kinds of people and those who are getting on a bit and can’t remember how their sentences are meant to finish… 😕  
[/QUOTE]

There are 10 kinds of people: Those who count in binary and those who don’t. 🙂 :mad:

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\
**Post date:** [July 2, 2007, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-was-a-dark-and-stormy-night/410174/22 "2007-07-02T16:20:43Z")

</div>

[QUOTE=Kalhoun]  
There are far shittier lines out there.  
[/QUOTE]  
Such as, “It was a brown and shitty night.”

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\
**Post date:** [July 2, 2007, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-was-a-dark-and-stormy-night/410174/23 "2007-07-02T16:20:45Z")

</div>

[QUOTE=CalMeacham]  
Snoopy’s book, by the way, was very briefly in print itself, as a book with the title “It was a Dark and Stormy Night”. It featured the Peanuts strips mentioning the book, and it had a reproduction of the cover as described by Snoopy (and as drawn by, IIRC, Linus).  
[/QUOTE]

Also see posts #8 and #9.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![mobo85](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b19c9b/32.png) [@mobo85](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mobo85)\
**Post date:** [July 2, 2007, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-was-a-dark-and-stormy-night/410174/24 "2007-07-02T16:23:54Z")

</div>

[QUOTE=CalMeacham]  
Snoopy’s book, by the way, was very briefly in print itself, as a book with the title “It was a Dark and Stormy Night”. It featured the Peanuts strips mentioning the book, and it had a reproduction of the cover as described by Snoopy (and as drawn by, IIRC, Linus).  
[/QUOTE]

Lucy drew the cover. Linus’s major role in the storyline was having the audacity to ask the question “What about the king?”- for which he was hit in the head with Snoopy’s typewriter.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Kalhoun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/3bc359/32.png) [@Kalhoun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kalhoun)\
**Post date:** [July 2, 2007, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-was-a-dark-and-stormy-night/410174/25 "2007-07-02T17:19:44Z")

</div>

[QUOTE=Cervaise]  
Such as, “It was a brown and shitty night.”  
[/QUOTE]

Or, it was an unlit and explosive diarrhea night.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Kythereia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e8c25b/32.png) [@Kythereia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kythereia)\
**Post date:** [July 2, 2007, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-was-a-dark-and-stormy-night/410174/26 "2007-07-02T22:07:27Z")

</div>

[QUOTE=A couple of British guys]  
It wasn’t a dark and stormy night.

It should have been, but that’s the weather for you. For every mad scientist who’s had a convenient thunderstorm just on the night his Great Work is finished and lying on the slab, there have been dozens who’ve sat around aimlessly under the peaceful stars while Igor clocks up the overtime.  
[/QUOTE]

😃

I third the not getting why it’s such a bad line. It’s not the greatest hook out there for the beginning of a book, but I’ve seen way more purple-y sentences.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Common\_Tater](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/common_tater/32/13846_2.png) [@Common\_Tater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Common_Tater)\
**Post date:** [July 2, 2007, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-was-a-dark-and-stormy-night/410174/27 "2007-07-02T22:32:10Z")

</div>

Yes, my copy had the dustcover and everything. It was a rather slim volume as I recall. I have no idea of the circumstances of how it came to be signed other than it was owned by my auntie.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\
**Post date:** [July 3, 2007, 2:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-was-a-dark-and-stormy-night/410174/28 "2007-07-03T02:59:51Z")

</div>

[QUOTE=Kythereia]  
😃

I third the not getting why it’s such a bad line. It’s not the greatest hook out there for the beginning of a book, but I’ve seen way more purple-y sentences.  
[/QUOTE]

Did you read the complete sentence in post #3? That full sentence is awful in many ways.

And it was not that one individual sentence, it was the fact that Bulwer-Lytton wrote that way all the time that made him infamous.

Some random paragraphs from Paul Cliiford, the book in question:

> [@](#):
>
> The boy evinced great hardihood of temper, and no inconsiderable  
> quickness of intellect. In whatever he attempted, his success was rapid,  
> and a remarkable strength of limb and muscle seconded well the dictates  
> of an ambition turned, it must be confessed, rather to physical than  
> mental exertion. It is not to be supposed, however, that his boyish life  
> passed in unbroken tranquillity. Although Mrs. Lobkins was a good woman  
> on the whole, and greatly attached to her _protegee_, she was violent and  
> rude in temper, or, as she herself more flatteringly expressed it, “her  
> feelings were unkimmonly strong;” and alternate quarrel and  
> reconciliation constituted the chief occupations of the _protegee’s_  
> domestic life. As, previous to his becoming the ward of Mrs. Lobkins, he  
> had never received any other appellation than “the child,” so the duty of  
> christening him devolved upon our hostess of the Mug; and after some  
> deliberation, she blessed him with the name of Paul. It was a name of  
> happy omen, for it had belonged to Mrs. Lobkins’s grandfather, who had  
> been three times transported and twice hanged (at the first occurrence of  
> the latter description, he had been restored by the surgeons, much to the  
> chagrin of a young anatomist who was to have had the honour of cutting  
> him up). The boy did not seem likely to merit the distinguished  
> appellation he bore, for he testified no remarkable predisposition to the  
> property of other people. Nay, although he sometimes emptied the pockets  
> of any stray visitor to the coffee-room of Mrs. Lobkins, it appeared an  
> act originating rather in a love of the frolic than a desire of the  
> profit; for after the plundered person had been sufficiently tormented by  
> the loss, haply, of such utilities as a tobacco-box or a handkerchief;  
> after he had, to the secret delight of Paul, searched every corner of the  
> apartment, stamped, and fretted, and exposed himself by his petulance to  
> the bitter objurgation of Mrs. Lobkins, our young friend would quietly  
> and suddenly contrive that the article missed should return of its own  
> accord to the pocket from which it had disappeared. And thus, as our  
> readers have doubtless experienced when they have disturbed the peace of  
> a whole household for the loss of some portable treasure which they  
> themselves are afterwards discovered to have mislaid, the unfortunate  
> victim of Paul’s honest ingenuity, exposed to the collected indignation  
> of the spectators, and sinking from the accuser into the convicted,  
> secretly cursed the unhappy lot which not only vexed him with the loss of  
> his property, but made it still more annoying to recover it.
> 
> Opposite to the fireplace was a large deal table, at which Dummie,  
> surnamed Dunnaker, seated near the dame, was quietly ruminating over a  
> glass of hollands and water. Farther on, at another table in the corner  
> of the room, a gentleman with a red wig, very rusty garments, and linen  
> which seemed as if it had been boiled in saffron, smoked his pipe, apart,  
> silent, and apparently plunged in meditation. This gentleman was no  
> other than Mr. Peter MacGrawler, the editor of a magnificent periodical  
> entitled “The Asiaeum,” which was written to prove that whatever is  
> popular is necessarily bad,–a valuable and recondite truth, which “The  
> Asinaeum” had satisfactorily demonstrated by ruining three printers and  
> demolishing a publisher. We need not add that Mr. MacGrawler was Scotch  
> by birth, since we believe it is pretty well known that _all_ periodicals  
> of this country have, from time immemorial, been monopolized by the  
> gentlemen of the Land of Cakes. We know not how it may be the fashion to  
> eat the said cakes in Scotland, but _here_ the good emigrators seem to  
> like them carefully buttered on both sides. By the side of the editor  
> stood a large pewter tankard; above him hung an engraving of the  
> “wonderfully fat boar formerly in the possession of Mr. Fattem, grazier.”  
> To his left rose the dingy form of a thin, upright clock in an oaken  
> case; beyond the clock, a spit and a musket were fastened in parallels to  
> the wall. Below those twin emblems of war and cookery were four shelves,  
> containing plates of pewter and delf, and terminating, centaur-like, in a  
> sort of dresser. At the other side of these domestic conveniences was a  
> picture of Mrs. Lobkins, in a scarlet body and a hat and plume. At the  
> back of the fair hostess stretched the blanket we have before mentioned.  
> As a relief to the monotonous surface of this simple screen, various  
> ballads and learned legends were pinned to the blanket. There might you  
> read in verses, pathetic and unadorned, how–
> 
> “Sally loved a sailor lad  
> As fought with famous Shovel!”
> 
> There might you learn, if of two facts so instructive you were before  
> unconscious, that
> 
> “Ben the toper loved his bottle,–  
> Charley only loved the lasses!”
> 
> When of these and various other poetical effusions you were somewhat  
> wearied, the literary fragments in bumbler prose afforded you equal  
> edification and delight. There might you fully enlighten yourself as to  
> the “Strange and Wonderful News from Kensington, being a most full and  
> true Relation how a Maid there is supposed to have been carried away by  
> an Evil Spirit on Wednesday, 15th of April last, about Midnight.” There,  
> too, no less interesting and no less veracious, was that uncommon  
> anecdote touching the chief of many-throned powers entitled “The Divell  
> of Mascon; or, the true Relation of the Chief Things which an Unclean  
> Spirit did and said at Mascon, in Burgundy, in the house of one Mr.  
> Francis Pereaud: now made English by one that hath a Particular Knowledge  
> of the Truth of the Story.”  
> At the conclusion of this harangue, a knock at the door being heard, Paul  
> took his departure, and met in the hall a fine-looking person dressed in  
> the height of the fashion, and wearing a pair of prodigiously large  
> buckles in his shoes. Paul looked, and his heart swelled. “I may  
> rival,” thought he,–“those were his very words,–I may rival (for the  
> thing, though difficult, is not impossible) Augustus Tomlinson!”  
> Absorbed in meditation, he went silently home. The next day the memoirs  
> of the great Turpin were committed to the flames, and it was noticeable  
> that henceforth Paul observed a choicer propriety of words, that he  
> assumed a more refined air of dignity, and that he paid considerably more  
> attention than heretofore to the lessons of Mr. Peter MacGrawler.  
> Although it must be allowed that our young hero’s progress in the learned  
> languages was not astonishing, yet an early passion for reading, growing  
> stronger and stronger by application, repaid him at last with a tolerable  
> knowledge of the mother-tongue. We must, however, add that his more  
> favourite and cherished studies were scarcely of that nature which a  
> prudent preceptor would have greatly commended. They lay chiefly among  
> novels, plays, and poetry,–which last he affected to that degree that he  
> became somewhat of a poet himself. Nevertheless these literary  
> avocations, profitless as they seemed, gave a certain refinement to his  
> tastes which they were not likely otherwise to have acquired at the Mug;  
> and while they aroused his ambition to see something of the gay life they  
> depicted, they imparted to his temper a tone of enterprise and of  
> thoughtless generosity which perhaps contributed greatly to counteract  
> those evil influences towards petty vice to which the examples around him  
> must have exposed his tender youth. But, alas! a great disappointment  
> to Paul’s hope of assistance and companionship in his literary labours  
> befell him. Mr. Augustus Tomlinson, one bright morning, disappeared,  
> leaving word with his numerous friends that he was going to accept a  
> lucrative situation in the North of England. Notwithstanding the shock  
> this occasioned to the affectionate heart and aspiring temper of our  
> friend Paul, it abated not his ardour in that field of science which it  
> seemed that the distinguished absentee had so successfully cultivated.  
> By little and little, he possessed himself (in addition to the literary  
> stores we have alluded to) of all it was in the power of the wise and  
> profound Peter MacGrawler to impart unto him; and at the age of sixteen  
> he began (oh the presumption of youth!) to fancy himself more learned  
> than his master.

“There… That wasn’t so good now, was it?” to cite Leonard Pinth-Garnell.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![DMark](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@DMark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DMark)\
**Post date:** [July 3, 2007, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-was-a-dark-and-stormy-night/410174/29 "2007-07-03T14:31:04Z")

</div>

[QUOTE=Renee]  
My creative writing instructor held gave it as an example of redundancy. Of course it was dark–it was night (and stormy, so it’s not like you’re going to have full moonlight). You don’t have to tell me twice in the same sentence.  
[/QUOTE]

So this would be better?

“I can see clearly now the rain is gone  
I can see all obstacles in my way  
Gone are the dark clouds that brought me down  
_It’s gonna be a bright, bright sun shiny day_.”

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Kythereia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e8c25b/32.png) [@Kythereia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kythereia)\
**Post date:** [July 3, 2007, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-was-a-dark-and-stormy-night/410174/30 "2007-07-03T18:10:02Z")

</div>

[QUOTE=Exapno Mapcase]  
Did you read the complete sentence in post #3? That full sentence is awful in many ways.

[/QUOTE]

Yes. And I agree that it’s a bad sentence–I’m just seen some that I think are worse.

Maybe it’s a matter of YMMV?

[Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-was-a-dark-and-stormy-night/410174.md?page=1)