Numéro Cinq Novel-in-a-Box Contest Archives

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At long last, in fear and trembling, the judges have reached a final, final decision (first there was a five-way tie, and then there was a three-way tie). We have checked the auguries, read the entrails and mapped the scapular fissures. This was a fantastic contest. Explosions of rampant creativity, blazing moments of brilliance. It’s a shame and an anti-climax, in some ways, to name a winner. For most of you, the act of entering, of creating the piece, was an epic of adventure and discovery. I’ve had emails from entrants saying they discovered new secrets about writing and process from the form. And your readers won because they got to see these delightful, witty, funny, and surprising texts appear each day on the entry page. Everyone who entered should be an inspiration to the rest of us.

The winners this time (may there be many more) are Julie Marden and Christopher Willard for their novel-in-a-box entitled Novel in a Bottle (thus doubling the metaphor). Novel in a Bottle is the tale of a doomed ship in a cracked bottle floating in the sea, its passengers embarking on a frenzy of decadence & despair as they await the final catastrophe. The text is itself a frenzy of allusion and technical play. The blank chapter (borrowed from Tristram Shandy), the poem chapter, the textual quotations. It’s full of character (how many characters inhabit this tiny text?) and sadness and comedy and eroticism. And at the end, Gerdy, the steward, swims for the surface and, perhaps, survives. It’s the Titanic in a bottle and, this time, Leonardo DiCaprio escapes.

See all the entries here. See the finalists here. And, as a reminder, here is the winner of the memoir-in-a-box contest.

Read the winning entry below!
Continue reading »

Okay, the judges are having a meltdown over this. Rereading the finalists only makes each one of the look better. E.g. The judges just noticed the very neat (not to mention witty) time control device Vivian Dorsel uses in her box novel. Instead of counting time normally, she tells time within the narrative by chapter. The judges don’t believe they have ever seen this done before. Characters are bursting with desire in these texts and desire is endless. Rich Farrell’s hero dreams of swimming to Green Island, evades the sharks, reaches the island, sleeps with Eve, but then the next day he pushes on in a rowboat to the west. Gerdy the steward in Julie Marden & Chris Willard’s bottle novel dives off the death ship at the last moment, twists past the broken cork and swims toward the light (one also has to admire the huge cast of characters they manage to organize in such a tiny space). Mitchell in Shelagh Shapiro’s gorgeous avalanche adventure forces himself to think about the light. Jonah, of course, just wants to win. The judges love the play with boxes (Vivian, Anna Maria), bottles (Julie & Chris), and burial (Shelagh). Traps and desire–and, of course, mixed form: fairy tales, poems, real boxes and paint, acrostic, literary reference (the blank chapter [Sterne] and the incarnadine [Shakespeare] scene in the bottle novel). Every piece here pushes out beyond mere realism to play and myth. What have you guys been drinking? Do you realize the headaches you’ve inspired?

The judges, as usual, fell for all the entries and had a terrible time deciding amongst them, all from friends, former students and fellow inmates. (This makes judging NC contests an extremely debilitating sport.) It’s a sad thing to force distinctions when everyone has entered the fray with such zeal and enthusiasm. All entries did what they were meant to do: tell a story in terse, stern prose. They all had élan. Many played with the idea of being in or outside a box (or a bottle, or a literal box). Jonah wrote his as an acrostic, an ancient form much used in the Bible, a different sort of box. There was a huge battle over Anna Maria’s actual box entry. But it was decided to include it here as a sixth finalist simply because making art out of the conventions (rules) of art is a legitimate artistic form. It wouldn’t be fair just to give her the prize for best Off The Page entry (though the judges are doing that, too).

The judges admired Vivian Dorsel’s entry for its use of literary allusion (the fairy tale) and for putting the heroine in the box. They admired Rich Farrell’s entry for its loopy adventure and romance, for the word “cavitate” and for that ending (the whole thing reminded the judges of their favourite movie Joe vs. the Volcano). Julie and Christopher put their novel in a bottle with, well, Noel Coward and wrote a pseudo-Edwardian romp with redemption at the end. Shelagh put her character in a metaphorical box and made him think of poetry. And Jonah wrote the acrostic. All this is wonderful.

Of those left behind, the judges want to mention Court Merrigan, who entered twice and wrote a lovely little thing about plague and love, and Cheryl Wilder for the old man in the closet asking for the toilet paper and her surprise ending.

But the competition was exceedingly fierce and the judges love you all.

See the finalists here!

The People have chosen.

The winners of the First Annual Numéro Cinq Novel-in-a-Box Contest, by a tie vote, are Rich Farrell for Wondering Where The Lions Are and Shelagh Shapiro for Infinity Falling.

The winner of the First Annual Numéro Cinq Memoir-in-a-Box Contest, after a fierce fight, is Steve Axelrod for his Memoir in a Box.

And the winner of the special Off The Page Peoples’ Choice Award is our own Anna Maria Johnson for her Cat-in-the-Box novel-in-a-box.

The winning entries appear below.

Entries for the First Annual Numéro Cinq Novel/Memoir-in-a-Box contest are now closed. At this point, as per usual at NC, the competition splits into two phases. While the venerable judges retire to a secluded mountain top in central New Brunswick to consider their choices, you THE PEOPLE (see photo above) get to choose and discuss your favourites.

The official entry list is here (click on this sentence to see the entries)! All the entries posted here are considered final and official however far they deviated from the norm or ignored contest deadlines.

And as per usual (and for some reason this always confuses people), please cast your vote in a comment beneath this post. You must vote in two categories, fiction and nonfiction. For the purposes of this competition, we shall consider Anna Maria Johnson’s Off The Page entry as the winner in that category.

Everyone is welcome to comment and vote. That means EVERYONE. You needn’t have entered or already be a member of the NC community. Outsiders, strangers, aliens and spectral beings are welcome. Mass voting by bots is welcome.

Voting ends at midnight September 22, 2010.

These photos were just too good to leave in the comment folder under the Novel-in-a-Box contest post. This is Anna Maria Johnson’s novel-in-a-box entry actually in a box–a lovely entry in a category all by itself. (Photos by Steven David Johnson.)

Jacob, the contrarian, during the EPE (Photo by Jonah Glover)

Inspiration

[Augusto] Monterroso is perhaps most famous for his short story “The Dinosaur,” which is said to be literature’s shortest story. It reads in full:

When he woke up, the dinosaur was still there.

In an 1996 interview with Ilan Stavans for the Massachusetts Review, Monterroso recalled some early reviews of “The Dinosaur”: “I still have the very first reviews of the book: critics hated it. Since that point on I began hearing complaints to the effect that it isn’t a short-story. My answer is: true, it isn’t a short story, it’s actually a novel.”

Brevity was, to say the least, an important concept for Monterroso. His essay “Fecundity” is included in The Oxford Book of Latin American Essays. It reads in full:

Today I feel well, like a Balzac; I am finishing this line.

—from Tom McCartan’s Crib notes on “What Bolaño Read”

The Contest

Okay, the long-awaited next Numéro Cinq literary contest, The First Annual Numéro Cinq Novel-in-a-Box/Memoir-in-a-Box Contest. The rules are pretty simple this time. You have to write an entire (don’t cut corners) novel or a memoir (personal narrative) consisting of 9 (a mystic number) chapters and each chapter can be no more than 5 lines long. (By lines, I mean the number of lines that appear on the comment box on the blog.) Fewer lines if you can. Try to remember what a novel is like: at least a couple of characters or more (usually), a conflict, development through a series of dramatic actions, etc. Alternatively, try to remember what a memoir looks like: a first person narrator (and a couple of other people or more), a thematically continuous narrative line often based on a conflict and or theme, development through a series of dramatic moments or incidents, etc. Indicate on your entry whether it is fiction or non-fiction (there will be separate prizes). (Note that in the Monterroso story quoted above there ARE two characters, the guy and the dinosaur.)

The contest is open to any living, sentient being in the universe. It is not limited to people who are already on the blog or VCFA students or former students. Everyone is welcome, and also welcome to join in other conversations or suggest topics.

Entries will be accepted between September 1 and September 15, 2010 (midnight), and should be written in English (Gary) and attached as comments to this post (the usual practice at NC).

Remember the values we hold dear here at Numéro Cinq: WIT & ARROGANCE. Remember Gordon Lish’s phrase ATTACK SENTENCES!

P.S. Anyone who mentions the insidious phrase “flash fiction” will have his or her comment deleted from the blog. I mean this! Delete it from your minds. This is not a flash fiction contest.