“Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped ‘Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J.’ ”

This painfully trite gem is the baby of Mr. Garrison Spik, a resident of Washington who has visited New York City many times.  It won the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, the goal of which is to come up with the worst first sentence of an imaginary novel. 

So in the spirit of melding the city of New York with bad writing, I came up with my own while riding the subway this morning. 

“As the slick, shiny, silver train rumbled onto the Brooklyn Bridge and into the resplendent morning light, Catalina White realized, with a dawning sense of acute self-awareness, that life –like the gestation period of a caterpillar in a cocoon– was far too short.” 

The funny thing is that this atrocity would have gotten me a good grade in high school English.  Anyway, try to come up with your own Gouldian sentence that relates to New York.   

Photo: Flickr courtesy of Photo Monkey