Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Baaad Sex in Books

by Raelene Gorlinsky

Jonathan Littell has won the seventeenth annual Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction Award, for The Kindly Ones.

The award was created in 1993 to draw attention to the "crude, tasteless, and often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in contemporary novels, and to discourage it."

The other finalist books include those by some well-known names:
The Humbling by Philip Roth
The Infinities by John Banville
Rhyming Life and Death by Amos Oz
The Naked name of Love by Sanjida O’Connell
A Dead Hand by Paul Theroux
The Death of Bunny Munroe by Nick Cave
The Rescue Man by Anthony Quinn
Love Begins in Winter by Simon Van Booy
Ten Storey Love Song by Richard Milward

You must go read the entries at http://www.literaryreview.co.uk/badsex.html ! Some of the best phrases:

"Her vulva was opposite my face. The small lips protruded slightly from the pale, domed flesh."

"This sex was watching at me, spying on me, like a Gorgon's head, like a motionless Cyclops whose single eye never blinks."

“turning his trousers into a tent with lots of rude organs camping underneath”

"Georgie has to roll Mr Condom down Mr Penis for him and she has to help insert him into Mrs Vagina."

"It is exactly as he imagined it - the hair, the lips, the hole - and he slips his hands under her wasted buttocks and enters her like a fucking pile driver."

"her bullet-proof pussy"

"her nipples, which are the size and texture of liquorice Jelly Spogs"

"River squeezes Bunny's cock with her muscular vagina. 'Wow,' says Bunny, from the depths of space. 'Pilates,' says River. 'Huh?' grunts Bunny. 'Cunt crunches,' says River, and contracts her pelvic floor again."

"he has been transformed into a delicate seismograph that intercepts and instantly deciphers her body's reactions"

11 comments:

Laurann Dohner said...

Raelene,

Thank you for sharing these. After I finished flinching over some of those... I nearly fell out of my chair laughing.

CKHB said...

Great, now I'm going to be put off sex for a month...

(BWAHAHAHAHAHAAA!!!)

Anne Calhoun said...

Wasted buttocks. What, exactly, are those? No...don't tell me. Thanks for sharing!

Chudney Thomas said...

I'm speechless and shaking my head in disbelief.

Delphine Dryden said...

Each year when I read this I almost always have the same three thoughts scattered through the belly laughs and groans. Those three thoughts are:

1) Ewwwwww. Ewwwwwwwwwww. Ew.
2) Um...do you mean "then she gave him head"? Because it almost sounded like that.
3) Dude, I hate to be the one to tell you, but...she was faking it.

Bill Greer said...

Doesn't an editor ever get involved and warn the authors that some of this is laughable?

Bernita said...

Perhaps I'm weird, but, within a certain context some of these are actually good.

Lesley Speller said...

Okay....the Georgie one is just creepy!

Barbara Elsborg said...

I love the naughty organs in the tent. A bat and two balls. But what else could be in there? A skipping rope? A yoyo? What fun!!

Barbara Elsborg

Anonymous said...

"her bullet proof pussy" HA! Now there's one I've never used before...hrm lmao wow...

Patty said...

What crap!! These people are actually published and being paid? YUCKY bad bad bad bad writing!!