No, I’m not talking about my alcoholic ex-boyfriend—I’m talking about the 2006 Bad Sex in Fiction Award, which was bestowed on debut novelist Iain Hollingshead. He seemed pretty delighted to be the recipient of the (dis)honor:
Hollingshead, 25, who received his award from rocker Courtney Love at a London ceremony, said he was delighted to become the prize’s youngest winner.
“I hope to win it every year,†said Hollingshead, who receives a statuette and a bottle of champagne.
Tim Willcocks, this year’s runner-up, had this to say about the prize:
Willcocks praised the Bad Sex prize as “a much better guide to a good read than those purveyors of powerful sleeping drugs, the Booker, the Pulitzer, the Goncourt et. al.â€
Suh-nap!
Also: Willcocks. Heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh. Cocks. (Somebody just pointed out that his name is actually Willocks, but the MSNBC article has his name as Willcocks. Somebody’s Freudian slip is showing.)
This article in the Daily Mail has some excerpts, as does this snippet in The Independent, but none of them are extensive, alas. Anyone with copies of these books want to transcribe some of the more (ahem) eloquent passages for our collective enjoyment?
(Thanks to Katie the Haiku Writing Wünderkind for the first link to the awards.)
Have they never heard of Bertrice Small?
Here are the shortlisted extracts:
http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,1959812,00.html
I don’t understand. How could Black Swan Green not have won? “Now his skin was glazed in roast pork sweat”??? It’s like that SNL skit with Will Ferrell and Rachel Dratch. “Luv-uh.”
Oh my, those are bad, really bad. I don’t think I’ve ever read anything that bad in any book claiming to be a romance novel. And they’re (all but one) written by men. I’m not sure what that means, but I find it interesting.
Candy—sorry to spoil your chortling, but his name is Tim Willocks, no c in the middle.
“A commotion of grunts and squeaks.” Nice. Still, I didn’t think the one that won was actually the worst.
And the Pynchon one was hilarious: “Reader, she bit him.”
Cathy: Thanks for pointing that out. The MSNBC article has it as Willcocks. Quite the Freudian slip on their part, eh?
“Black Swan Green” was clearly robbed. “Now she made a noise like a tortured Moomintroll”? Funniest Tove Jansson reference ever.
I have to say this makes the nitpicks I had about some of the short stories I read this weekend just disappear.
I don’t know why Hollingshead won—the excerpt was clichéd, true, but it wasn’t hilariously awful the way Black Swan Green was, or even that bit from Pynchon’s new novel. Irvine Welsh’s piece made me cringe mightily, but the thing was, you could tell he WANTED you to cringe, and I’m not sure it counts as bad sex writing when bad sex is exactly what the author wanted to convey, and it came across as vividly as it did.
Does Mark Haddon’s excerpt really imply that a woman reached orgasm by giving a guy a hand job?
Some dude explains why they made the decision they did: http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/books/2006/11/bad_sex.html
Thanks for the link, Arethusa. I suppose he has a point: flaccid (hur hur hur) writing can be a more egregious offence than deliciously bad prose.
This bit made me chuckle, though:
Pffff to that. I like my sexy books. Sometimes the sex belongs, and sometimes it doesn’t, but generally speaking, I much prefer to go along for the ride, so to speak, just as I prefer a horror book to provide something truly horrific to scare the bejesus out of me, instead of shutting the door or my eyes at the most critical juncture. I also don’t see people making these sorts of arguments about other sorts of intimacy, such as emotional intimacy (oooh, new topic of discussion: can something be emotionally pornographic?), or scenes involving graphic violence—not for books, anyway.
I pfffted at that as well. I couldn’t understand why writing in some detail about actual sex, as opposed to anything else, makes it “pornographic” (and therefore horrible) without citing examples in other areas. Murakami is a lit fic author—to choose someone the Literary Review wouldn’t sneer at—who writes comparatively frank sex scenes and there’s nothing “porno” about them. As are the sex scenes written by many romance authors, of course. And they make it damn interesting.
I definitely think novels can be emotionally pornographic, theoretically, but I can’t say I’ve read any. Hmmm. I think it’s probably easier to find films as examples (for me). I’m tempted to say a great deal of the Oscar-bait films are guilty of this, but I need to consider the idea for a bit.
Sazzat said: “Does Mark Haddon’s excerpt really imply that a woman reached orgasm by giving a guy a hand job?”
Pffft. What an idiot. Every man knows women orgasm from giving them *blow* jobs, not *hand* jobs.
eggs.
Laurell K. Hamilton.
‘nuff said.
Oh my god… I’m completely ruined for life. I mean I’ve read some really bad prose before, but nothing this tragic. Do men find this sexy? Please, I hope not, or I think it might be time to look into this celibacy craze that’s sweeping the nation.
Eww. Stop thinking.
Egregiously bad writing, period, not just bad sex scenes. That David Mitchell doofus is trying WAY too hard to be clever. Mark Haddon is trying WAY too hard to be poetic. And Julia Glass is trying WAY, WAY too hard to be erudite. What’s with that flipping-through-a-Thesaurus orgasm? Have people ever thought so much during sex?
Yes…but only in Woody Allen movies. Like that sequence in Husbands and Wives in which Judy Davis’s character is being boinked by Liam Neeson’s character and, the whole time, is thinking about which of her friends are foxes and which are hedgehogs.
I simply can’t slog through such prose. And these writers are considered heavy hitters in the world of lit-rature? Yikes.
Gonzo-eroticism just doesn’t do it for me. (I honestly can’t remember the last time desire was beckoned from my marrow. Shit, I can’t remember the first time. And what the bloody hell is a brass firedog? Is that an andiron? God, I just couldn’t go on!)
Sometimes, less is definitely more.
Actually, I can think of one right off the top of my head: The Lighthouse Keeper by James Pratt. Just to give you an idea: it’s a close runner-up with Cassie Edwards’ Desire’s Blossom for Worst. Book. EVAR. Its blatant attempts to pull at your heartstrings were astonishing and yes, pornographic.
Oh, also, good point about Oscar-bait movies being emotionally pornographic. Titanic comes to mind, as does Forrest Gump. (Sorry, I have a chip on my shoulder about Forrest Gump because I liked the book so goddamn much, and the movie perverted almost everything about it, including the point of the story.)
What’s with that flipping-through-a-Thesaurus orgasm? Have people ever thought so much during sex?
I’ve been looking for my copy of Ivory’s Black Silk, because when Submit and Graham have their first—very bad—sex, Submit is having all these visions—of inlets, of pillars, of dark and flowing images. It came immediately to mind when I read the passage by Glass, but for some reason I found the Ivory passage so much more erotic, even though it was very cerebral in a similar way to Glass’s. Why is it, I wonder, that I prefer the Ivory?
One thing I’ll probably never be able to scrub from my mind, though is this: “her engorged basketry of cowl and lip”
And good god, I hate the word “mewling.”
I know!! They left out his wrestling career in Muncie, IN (which is where I went to Uni) entirely, all the awesome surreal stuff about the chess-playing monkey, and they totally rewrote his character. He wasn’t a lovable retard in the book. He was hung like a moose and he fucked Jenny all over the kitchen. I think they broke the furniture, didn’t they?
Ana: Yup! And they also turned Jenny into the dope fiend, when Forrest was the one with the addiction. All in the name of making him more lovable. Bah and grrrr.
Robin: ditto on mewling. When a heroine mewls and thrashes, the mental image that pops up is the way my cats get when I have to give them medications, or when the vet takes their temperature. Not a sexy picture.
Wow. I think I need to read Forrest Gump. I had no idea it was based on a novel.
“Titanic” is a perfect example except that, for me, I was laughing through most of it. ‘Specially when the people were bumping random things as they spiralled toward their death in the ship.
The thing is I usually avoid Oscar bait movies like the plague; and once a book starts going bad I only go for a couple more pages and then disdainly throw it aside. So I get the impression that they’re emotionally pornographic, hear it second hand, or get a taste of it, but never get the full experience.
As for the poor lit fic authors and their horrible sex scenes I must defend them. Or at least James Meek whose “People’s Act of Love” had excellent, excellent writing, pacing, setting, everything…until he tried to write a love scene and indulged in the most purple prose I’ve seen outside of a 70’s Mills & Boons. I literally turned away from the pages in embarrassment for him. It seems to be something of an Achilles Heel for that group.
I can’t vouch for Mitchell or Oates though, never read their work (and don’t plan to).
The book by Winston Groom is a lot grittier, a lot less schmaltz and the signature Tom Hanks sticky-sweet morality. The movie is good unless you’ve read the book. And then it just pisses you off on behalf of Winston Groom:
So he refused to let them make the sequel, Gump and Co..
The difference between the movie and book is best summed up thus:
Yes, me, too. And to be frank, I have that reaction to sexual pornography as well, more often than not. Rare is the porn that doesn’t make me howl with laughter or cringe with discomfort.
And yes, I’m a big fan of literary fiction as well, though many seem to be completely clueless when it comes to writing teh sexx0r, especially when they attempt to make it Sexy and Meaningful; they seem to succeed better when using it to disgust or for comic effect, as Irvine Welsh did in his scenes. Jane Smiley did a decent job with her sex scenes (a couple of lesbian scenes, even!) in Moo. And Jonathan Franzen did a bang-up job of showing us how fucked-up his characters were about their sex lives in The Corrections.
I never read Forest Gump, but I did read Gump & Co and got the impression the first book had been very different.
I loved how the second book managed to poke fun at the movie. Forest actually meets Tom Hanks during one scene and is confused about his ramblings about chocolates. A major motion picture about Forest’s life (that gets everything all wrong) comes out towards the end of the book – after he’s messed with the recipe of Coca-Cola and run the Exxon Valdez aground.
Croodled. She croodled.
I have to look away before the editor part of my brain commits suicide.
I read Forrest Gump a long time ago..in ‘92, I think. The movie did pretty much screw it up.
Forrest Gump fucks?!? Excuse me while I have a brain seizure. I never read the book under the assumption that it was as schmaltzy as the movie, so now I’m attempting to assimilate this new information and it’s going badly. Very very badly.
I was assuming that the Black Swan Green excerpt I saw quoted was done intentionally by Mitchell because if he’s serious…holy cow! I’ve read intentionally bad fanfic that squicked me out less. And what does Now he moved up and down, Man-from Atlantisly even mean? Though I suppose at least that’s a better image than “roast pork sweat” or the assumption that the Chinese rug burn Debbie suffers before she gets froggy legs is due to some strange and virulent STD that works instantaneously upon groinal contact.
And as for emotional pornography I’ve got two words for you as the QED that it exists: Nicholas Sparks.
Oh God, Nicholas Sparks. Oh God. I am filled with horror and I think I’ve only tried—wait have I ever read one of his books? I don’t think so. Yet his names fills me with horror. *shudder* *cries*