<HTML>JurisFiction Awards 1986
Nominations from: Jon Brierley
Best Romantic Lead (Male); Tom Jones. (The eponymous Fielding hero, not the Welsh singer). A good sound lad, if a little too ready to give in to his appetites, and liable to sweep any susceptible female off her feet in minutes flat.
Best Romantic Lead (Female); Dorothea Brooke, “Middlemarch”. Intelligent, loyal, kind, and she gives up her fortune to marry the man she loves. And she won’t do a Gwyneth when she gets the gong, either.
Most troubled romantic lead (male); Jude Fawley, “Jude the Obscure” (first child hangs second two and himself, girlfriend runs off with man she hates, wife leaves him to die while out on the razzle. Or anybody else from Hardy, really).
Most troubled romantic lead (female); Laura Glyde, “The Woman in White” (banged up in a loony bin, had unspeakable things done to, replaced by a doppelganger, goes mad). (Tess Durbeyfield gets an honourable mention, but I don’t want to give another prize to a Hardy character).
Character you'd most like to shake and tell to get a life; Hamlet. Stop maundering on and do something!
Most incomprehensible plot; “The Big Sleep”, Raymond Chandler (OK, who killed the chauffeur? And why?)
Most Boring Book; “Faerie Queene”, Edmund Spenser (longest ass-kiss in history)
Best opening paragraph; “1984”, George Orwell. (“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen …”).
Best closing paragraph; “Wuthering Heights,” Emily Bronte (“…. unquiet slumbers for those sleepers in that quiet earth”. Always gets me right there.)
Best Line of Dialogue – ever; “Is that you, Rabbit?” said Eeyore. “Let’s pretend it isn’t, and see what happens,” said Rabbit. – A.A. Milne, “House at Pooh Corner”.
Worst Book Ever Written; “Finnegan’s Wake”, James Joyce. (Runner-up, “Lady Chatterley’s Lover”, DH Lawrence). OK, there are many worse, but none that are so bad yet taken so seriously.
Worst Poet Ever; William McGonagall, poet and tragedian (no contest)
Dopiest Shakespearean Character; Othello (that’s a nice hanky…where’d you get it?)
Most impossible scientific invention in an SF novel; Jules Verne, “From the Earth to the Moon” …. Fired off by a bloody big cannon. All right, as technology it might work, but as a means of keeping human beings from becoming strawberry jam, it wouldn’t.
Most implausible premise in any genre; Anthony Hope, “The Prisoner of Zenda” – Mr. Rassendyll, you look so like our King even his fiancee couldn’t tell you apart. Yeah, right.
Additional categories;
Silliest character name in a serious work; Mr. M’Choakumchild, “Hard Times,” Charles Dickens.
Most unintentionally funny poem ever; “Pippa Passes”, Robert Browning. (“It’s a good rhyme for bats”. Er, yes, Mr. Browning). (Go to [
www.sm.rim.or.jp] for full text, and then search for ‘bats’).
My wife Claire would also like to nominate Scarlett O’Hara for both best female lead and a slap round the chops.</HTML>