In Competition No. 2532 you were invited to take a recent news item and compress it into 25 words.
I am grateful to Eric Smith in the West Indies who suggested the idea and drew my attention to the shadowy figure of Félix Fénéon, art critic and anarchist, among other things. His fait divers, or news in brief, published over the course of 1906 in Le Matin newspaper, are the work of a supreme stylist. Fénéon gravitated towards material that was violent, bloody and macabre, which he distilled into elegant, deadpan three-liners. Les Nouvelles en Trois Lignes was published last year as Novels in Three Lines in a translation by Luc Santé. Here’s an example of Fénéon’s epigrammatic genius:
There is no longer a God even for drunkards. Kersilie, of St.-Germain, who mistook the window for the door, is dead.
The winners below net £10 per entry printed.
Academics have warned schools not to teach
children to be patriotic,
As their country, academics presumably apart,
Has given its citizens too many bad examples.
Paul Griffin
Tony Blair accepts huge fees as bank adviser,
Tony Blair accepts huge fees as insurance
company adviser,
So what did we expect, holy poverty maybe?
Brian Murdoch
McDonald’s are to offer fast McA-levels in
Burger Studies.
The new course will be as rigorous as other
new courses
With names ending in ‘Studies’.
Keith Norman
Some banks lent over backwards to provide
mortgages for people who couldn’t
repay them.
Eventually everyone owed everyone else.
Now nobody can borrow anything much.
W.J. Webster
No tiny tots, just tottering dodderers rocked
and rolled
In Manchester’s new ‘pensioners’ playground’,
where recreation for wrecks transforms
Creaky-hipped hobblers into hippy hoodlums.
Alan Millard
China paralysed by freak snowfalls. Millions
stranded in city stations as holiday
rush stymied.
President claims, ‘Everything under control.’
Lancashire man has to postpone trip.
Shirley Curran
Hopeful Democrats? Just two, now: first
woman, or first black candidate.
Expect caucus-pocus and primary slugfests,
right to the convention.
‘Change’? No change.
Bill Greenwell
So: Becks won’t flex his pecs against the Swiss.
He’s been given the boot, not the boots.
But he’ll be the Italian’s centurion eventually,
anyway.
Bill Greenwell
The Egg Bank is withdrawing credit cards from
its ‘higher risk’ customers,
The risk being that they might unscrupulously
Pay off their debts inconveniently quickly.
Noel Petty
Archbishop of Canterbury explores fusion of
sharia law with British legal system
In incomprehensible World at One interview,
and lecture,
Subsequently inventing the word ‘unclarity’.
D.A. Prince
Uno has become the first beagle
To win best in show at Westminster Kennel Club.
In America, any dog can get to the top.
John O’Byrne
Archbishop Nicely Nicely seeks chumble-
dumming up with Johnny Heathen.
Daily Malice prints fuming leader.
Public opinion there already. See letters page.
’Tis a miracle.
John Samson
In the United States, two centre-right parties
Spend millions of dollars not on voters
But on votes to vote in the voted for. Stalemate.
Godfrey H. Holmes
Britain’s bees may die out within ten years
If nothing is done for them. Bees contribute
one hundred and sixty-five million
pounds
Annually to agriculture.
Josh Ekroy
A youth was shot/stabbed yesterday
In Manchester/London/Nottingham/somewhere
else.
A policeman has filled in the appropriate
form(s).
Michael Cregan
Competition No 2535: Beyond belief
The Manga Bible, a comic-book reworking of the Old and New Testaments which has been endorsed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, aims to make the biblical message appeal more to the 15- to 25-year-old age group. You are invited to submit a version of a bible story recast for the atheist or agnostic market (150 words maximum). Entries to ‘Competition 2536’ by 6 March or email lucy@spectator.co.uk.
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