Stuff that makes me happy 3

Bad writing. Really bad writing.

It makes my skin crawl, but somehow, it makes me happy.

When I was reading the Da Vinci Code on holidays a few years ago, I was positively glowing with delight at the sublime awfulness of Brown's dialogue and the clumsiness of his exposition. [I loved Michael York's Basil Exposition character in the Austin Powers movies] I recently heard a radio review of the film PS I Love You in which the reviewer, who had obviously hated the book, gleefully informed her audience that the movie's woeful dialogue and pitiful characterisation demonstrated just how baaad a writer Ms Ahern is. I also loved Harrison Ford's remark to George Lucas regarding his stinky dialogue: "Just 'cos you can write it George, doesn't mean I can say it!"

As a child, I didn't realise that the typing beagle up on the kennel was not the originator of the wonderful, "It was a dark and stormy night ..." line. My favourite one from the Peanuts strip was:

It was a dark and stormy night. Suddenly, a shot rang out! A door slammed. The maid screamed. Suddenly, a pirate ship appeared on the horizon! While millions of people were starving, the king lived in luxury. Meanwhile, on a small farm in Kansas, a boy was growing up ...

Which, when compared to the Bulwer-Lytton's original:

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.

doesn't seem half bad. At least Snoopy's version has a bit of action! The University of San Jose sponsors a Bulwer-Lytton contest each year. Some entries that caught my eye:

• With a curvaceous figure that Venus would have envied, a tanned, unblemished oval face framed with lustrous thick brown hair, deep azure-blue eyes fringed with long black lashes, perfect teeth that vied for competition, and a small straight nose, Marilee had a beauty that defied description.

• Just beyond the Narrows the river widens.

• Although Sarah had an abnormal fear of mice, it did not keep her from eeking out a living at a local pet store.

• As a scientist, Throckmorton knew that if he were ever to break wind in the echo chamber he would never hear the end of it.

• The sun oozed over the horizon, shoved aside darkness, crept along the greensward, and, with sickly fingers, pushed through the castle window, revealing the pillaged princess, hand at throat, crown asunder, gaping in frenzied horror at the sated, sodden amphibian lying beside her, disbelieving the magnitude of the frog's deception, screaming madly, 'You lied!'
  

For the strong of stomach, there's plenty more where that came from here.

Bonus point for anyone who can tell me the origin one of my all-time heroic pieces of purple prose:

"[The peach satin robe] ...slid to the tile floor with a sensuous whisper and Dare shuddered to see her thus naked before her."