Department Of English & Comparative Literature

I want to visit the Department of English & Comparative Literature at San Jose State University for the sole purpose of meeting Scott Rice, Ph.D. in person. Dr. Rice is obviously held in high esteem on the academic front, since he’s the Department Chair. His research interests cover the range of satire, grammar, British & European novels and commercialism in education.

Even more important, Scott Rice is the originator of the the world-famous Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, an annual competition for would-be writers that challenges them to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels.

The contest is named after a minor Victorian novelist, Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, whose novel Paul Clifford bagan with the now-(in)famous line: “It was a dark and stormy night.”

More can be seen about the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest here: http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/

Don’t miss the wonderful listings and examples from past winners and runner-up entries. They’re well worth the trip. And maybe I’ll get to make my trip to SJSU someday, and shake the hand of the man who made this all possible.