(for it is on my blog that our scene lies)

Placed on the page just where it ought to be, so that I could nibble on it as I was taking a break from the cryptic crossword yesterday, itself a break from some HTML hand-coding (yum!), I was enjoying a piece in the Guardian which looked at the results of the latest Bulwer-Lytton Contest as they make use of weather imagery. Honestly, I think B-L has been dealt a bad hand. It’s not that Paul Clifford isn’t appalingly florid; nor is it that there’s so much out there that’s every bit as bad. The problem is that the meme by which his memory is perpetuated — that the beginning of Paul Clifford is iconically bad — isn’t really true:

“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.”

Now, with one or two caveats, I think that’s an entirely creditable bit of scene-setting. The word choices are mostly modest. The imagery is effective. There’s some pathetic fallacy in the struggling of the lamps, but the whole isn’t nearly as purple as one might be led to believe. Is the problem — like the kid who comes to Hamlet and complains that it’s full of clichés — that repetition and parody subsequent to B-L’s time (viz. Peanuts) have made it impossible to experience with fresh eyes something that’s at worst a bit pedestrian?

Or maybe it’s that huge, steaming, parenthetical turd which sits in middle of the thing. There might be nothing at all wrong with ‘It was a dark and stormy night’ — at least, nothing to merit its comical baggage — but ‘(for it is in London that our scene lies)’ is tripe packed very densely indeed, and worthy of its own bad writing contest. It’s a non sequitur: it appears to seek to confirm something we’ve not been marginally led to infer — that we’re in London. The authorial voice comes crashing in as if in desperate attempt to fill a just-noticed but crucial gap in an unreversible oral telling. The chummy ‘our scene’ is jarringly meta and hatefully precious. But look:

“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, rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.”

Is that so bad?

6 Comments

  • It’s better than what *I* write, so I’m not going to criticize it.

    I’ve never believed that ‘a dark and stormy night’ was a horrid description of the weather, despite attempts to teach me so. After all, it describes the weather fairly effectively, as most of us have experienced dark and stormy nights at one time or another.

    I do wince when “It was a dark and stormy night” is the opening phrase. Still, how can you criticize Paul Clifford for using it, as B-L was the first?

    sparkle

    p.s. Yes, I do occasionally read blogs still!

  • sparkle:

    I’ve never believed that ‘a dark and stormy night’ was a horrid description of the weather, despite attempts to teach me so. After all, it describes the weather fairly effectively, as most of us have experienced dark and stormy nights at one time or another.

    I wonder if it’s read as if a ‘dark’ night is clumsily obvious – like ‘wet’ rain, or ‘cold’ snow. It shouldn’t be – cloud-cover and moonlight varies a lot, natch. But then I’ve been ridiculed in the past for moaning that rain was the particularly wet sort. One thing Brits do know, is rain, in all its variegated forms.

  • Um, yes, it IS that bad. It’s clumsy, hurried, overwrought and just plain poorly executed. It’s not quite John Norman, but it’s almost as inept. ‘Parenthetical turd’ is a brilliant description, but B-L also clearly had prepositional diarrhoea.

  • Tasha:

    Um, yes, it IS that bad. It’s clumsy, hurried, overwrought and just plain poorly executed.

    Honestly, I just don’t see it. Overwrought, perhaps, but that’s the time and the genre. Might as well lambast Dickens for giving characters silly names. There’s a difference between thinking it’s not beautifully crafted prose, and treating it as the very model of dreck. I defy anyone to read that first sentence – minus the prepositional turd, perhaps – and be unable to picture the scene really well.

  • OK, this is a test. I posted a really, really long response to this earlier and it’s NOT HERE. If this comment shows up I’ll know my previous one is gone and I’ll pout and stamp my feet, but I am not about to try rewriting it. But if this one doesn’t show up either no one but me will ever see this little rambling tantrum…

  • Tasha:

    If this comment shows up I’ll know my previous one is gone and I’ll pout and stamp my feet, but I am not about to try rewriting it.

    Ah, okay. I guess you’ll just have to admit that I’m right then.

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