In Competition No. 2654 you were asked to submit a piece of lively and plausible prose, the first word beginning with ‘a’, the second with ‘b’, and so on, throughout the alphabet. Then to start again from ‘a’ and continue up to a maximum of 156 words.
This was a real stinker, I admit. There were slip-ups from experienced competitors (Mary Holtby, Nicholas Hodgson), and many entries petered out into exhausted and exasperated silence well before the 156-word limit (though there was no obligation, of course, to reach it). As Basil Ransome-Davies so eloquently put it: ‘Basta! You will go to hell for this one.’ Well, Bazza, you can blame Cervantes, who, John Whitworth tells me, invented this game.
For all the torture they inflicted, the strict technical parameters did produce some inventive responses, as well as some delightfully surreal if at times somewhat stilted prose. Hats off to all who entered, and especially to the winners, printed below, who get £35 each. Sheer brilliance earns W.J. Webster the extra fiver.
At best, Charles Dickens exemplifies flawed genius, however interpreted. Joyful knockabout, lively melodrama, nauseatingly overdone pathos, quite ridiculous sentimental tosh uneasily vie with x-rated yarns. Zestful always, brilliantly charismatic, Dickens entertains famously, giving himself in joyous, kind-hearted, liberal measure. No other practitioner quite realises such terrific, unquenchable vitality, with x-factor youthful zeal. Articulating brave causes, Dickens eloquently fought greed, hypocrisy, injustice — jollying killjoys, lampooning moneybags, needling officious pomposity, questioning received stupidities. That unflinching vision was x-ray, yielding Zoroastrian archetypes. But creatively deconstructing egregious false gods helped ignite jealousies, kindled long-term, malevolent, narrow-minded opposition, perpetually quarrelsome. (Remember something, though: universally valued was ‘Xmas’, yuletide zippily adapted beyond Christ-mass — Dickens engagingly fostered gregarious hijinks in jovially kitsch lavishness.) Marriage now obtrudes.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in