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Philip Roth

Paul Theroux

John Banville

Nick Cave

Other (specify in thread)

[KvP]

Time for the bad sex in fiction awards! Yaaaay!

The Nominees!

It was as if she were wearing a mask on her genitals, a weird totem mask, that made her into what she was not and was not supposed to be 

Her hands were all over me, four hands it seemed, or more than four, and as she touched she made me weightless, lifting me off the table in a prolonged ritual of levitation

 

She puts her hands flat against his chest and leans into him in a simulacrum of a swoon, making a mewling sound

Bunny lies on his back on the sofa. He is naked and his clothes sit in sad, little heaps on the living room floor

Vote in the poll! Reflect on the bad fiction sex of years past. What are your favorites? What makes you laugh? What makes you cry?

[Zingoleb]

Is the Nick Cave one serious? I like that one a lot if it's supposed to be funny. If it's serious I may have to vote that one.

[Ikrik]

The Philip Roth one was completely weird and horrible.  I keep reading it and even though I think I understand what it's saying it still has me baffled. 

[KvP]

So the official winner of the award was Jonathan Littell, who wrote "The Kindly Ones", a fictional memoir of a former SS officer.

The offending passage compared female genitalia to various Greek fiends, including the mythical monster Gorgon and "a motionless Cyclops whose single eye never blinks."

As an added bonus, here's more stuff from the ever-lovable Nick Cave:

Cave described nipples which were "the size and texture of liquorice Jelly Spogs" and at one point a character in the book pleads with her partner to "pray, pray at my portal."

[Tom]

I honestly don't see anything wrong with Cave's writing. Do I have problems?

[Dimmukane]

I don't see anything wrong with it either, I just find it hilarious.

[David_Dovey]

Banville, because "simulacrum of swoon" sounds like it would be a good nickname for James Brown, and a very bad description of whatever the hell he was attempting to describe there.

[Liz]

They all sort of make sense except for the Roth one. Is it referring to pubic hair?

I have no idea.

[Inlander]

Strap-on, I'm guessing.

[McTaggart]

The Nick Cave one is entirely in the style of the book it's in. I've not read it, but I've heard a recording of Cave reading a chapter and I don't think it's meant to be terribly sensual.

I'd me more interested in an award for terrible erotica.

[Joseph]

Strap-on, I'm guessing.

My guess as well.  By all accounts the Roth novel is pretty terrible.  It's a pity, because he's produced some absolutely stunning novels over the course of his long career.  Many of them quite recently even.  It seems like he didn't even try for this one though.

[Surgoshan]

I'd me more interested in an award for terrible erotica.

For a period of about two months at my fraternity, someone felt it was amusing to print up terrible erotica and tape them to the inside of the stalls.

I mention this because this I remember.

"'I'm going with you to Washington to cum', he chuckled!!!"

I remember it because of the horrifically inappropriate exclamation points.  The story, if you were wondering, involved a cougar politician lady "seducing" a twenty-something dude.

[Beren]

I love Paul Theroux's travel writing, but his fictions leaves a good bit to be desired.  That Roth line is amazing. I'm going to use it at the next available opportunity (that may ruin said opportunity).

[KvP]

I'd me more interested in an award for terrible erotica.

One Christmas during high school one of my friends "gifted" me with some very old sci-fi/psychedelic erotica. What I most remember was a passage about a race of centaurs that capture the main character. The vaginas of the females are described as "red holes" and apparently they use them as trumpets. The centaurs also mock the size of the protagonists' junk relative to theirs.

That novel was not terribly erotic.

[öde]

It's a shame I didn't get the iphone app for The Death Of Bunny Munro, but the bookmark tassel for the hardback version is bright pink which makes up for it a little.