WWW- Vancouver’s James Macdonald says writing badly takes talent.

And his forte for purple prose was applauded in this year’s annual San Jose State University contest for the worst opening sentence to the worst possible novel.

Mr. Macdonald, a retired architect who writes humorous short stories in his spare time, received a nod in the dishonourable mentions category for this groaner: “Mitzi’s wet T-shirt clung to her torso like paint on the nose of a jumbo jet.”

The Vancouverite, one of two Canadian winners — both from British Columbia — said it was actually his least favourite of the two sentences he entered in the contest.

The other was much longer, Mr. Macdonald said, but he remembered it word for word in a telephone interview:

” ‘Ointment, ointment, ointment. All you ever think about is your damn multinational pharmaceutical company. Why don’t you spend some time thinking about me,’ Brenda hissed as she lurched out of the bistro and hailed a yellow cab, leaving a stunned Stanley Stinkmire contemplating the strange dichotomy before him — a glass of warm Bud Light and a cold order of French fries,” Mr. Macdonald wrote.

He said he spent a bit of time working on the sentences but basically they just come to him out of the blue.

He learned of the competition from his daughter, an English major at the University of Washington when San Jose first held the contest.

In 1982, the English department at San Jose State University began sponsoring the contest, named after Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton and in honour of the opening line to his novel Paul Clifford, which began, “It was a dark and stormy night.”

Mr. Macdonald and his daughter both entered the contest once before. That time, his sentence was included in a book put together by the department.

He said he dislikes poor writing, so the idea of a contest around that idea was interesting.

“I enjoy words, and I enjoy writing, and I thought this Bulwer-Lytton thing was marvellous.”

He said, however, that it is more difficult than it seems to write a bad first line to a novel. “It takes a bit of talent to do it so it has a zip to it.”

Canada’s only other winner, Cranbrook’s Kevin Hogg, paid homage to Mr. Bulwer-Lytton’s, “It was a dark and stormy night,” with his entry.

“It was a dark and stormy night, although technically it wasn’t black or anything — more of a gravy colour like the spine for the 1969 Scribner’s Sons edition of A Farewell to Arms, and, truth be told, the storm didn’t sound any more fierce than the opening to Leon Russell’s 1975 classic, Back to the Island.”

Mr. Hogg could not be reached for comment.

The grand-prize winner, Dan McKay of Fargo, N.D., wrote about female anatomy and classic cars, bringing them together in, well, a unique way.

“As he stared at her ample bosom, he daydreamed of the dual Stromberg carburetors in his vintage Triumph Spitfire, highly functional yet pleasingly formed, perched prominently on top of the intake manifold, aching for experienced hands, the small knurled caps of the oil dampeners begging to be inspected and adjusted as described in chapter seven of the shop manual.”

Mr. McKay, a computer analyst at Microsoft in Great Plains, N.D., bested thousands of entrants from the North Pole to Manchester, England, to win the $250 (U.S.) prize. He is currently in China, and couldn’t be reached to comment.

“We want writers with a little talent, but no taste,” San Jose State English professor Scott Rice said. “And Dan’s entry was just ludicrous.”