The sweat, the groans, the spasming muscles, the licked ears and other bits, the pendulous breasts and other bits; it can only be time for the bad sex prize, established 23 years ago by the Literary Review “to draw attention to poorly written, perfunctory or redundant passages of sexual description in modern fiction, and to discourage them”. There is absolutely no sign that it is succeeding in its noble objective.
Eight books have made the shortlist, but the pig’s head and the prime minister have fallen at the first fence, although the judges evidently lingered over the suggestion.
“Michael Ashcroft and Isabel Oakeshott’s Call Me Dave was brought to the judges’ attention because of its suggestion that ‘the future PM inserted a private part of his anatomy into the animal’s mouth’. That assertion was so flimsily corroborated as to resemble fiction, but, regrettably, the biographers displayed insufficient literary brio to merit serious consideration,” the judges said in a statement.
Erica Jong – whose most famous novel, Fear of Flying, gave the world the concept of the “zipless fuck” but was published long before the prize was invented – has made the shortlist with her latest novel, Fear of Dying. The man says he has felt a bolt of lightning down his spine, the woman tells him he has raised “the kundalini”, the life force. “You betcha,” the grateful partner says, “Kundalini, schmundalini, it’s great stuff.”
Some startlingly distinguished authors have come through the field in previous years: Ben Okri took the trophy last year, and John Updike won in 2008. This year the former Smiths frontman Morrissey has a chance of success, nominated for his first novel, List of the Lost, much mocked when it was published by Penguin Classics. This is, the judges point out, “the first time an author from the distinguished Penguin Classics stable has made it onto the shortlist”.
“Eliza and Exra rolled together into the one giggling snowball of full-figured copulation,” one particularly energetic passage begins. It was always going to end badly: “Both fell awkwardly off the bed.”
“He is a very strong contender,” Frank Brinkley, one of the judges, said reverently.
Richard Bausch has made the list for Before, During, After, a novel set against the background of the bombing of the Twin Towers; Aleksandar Hemon for The Making of Zombie Wars; Joshua Cohen for Book of Numbers, described by the New York Times as “brilliantly exhausting”; and the Norwegian author Tomas Espedal for Against Nature.
The only other woman to make the shortlist, Lauren Groff, is nominated for Fates and Furies: “He shut his eyes and thought of mangoes, split papayas, fruits tart and sweet and dripping with juice, and then it was off, and he groaned and his whole body turned sweet.”
Some of the bad sex is definitely not safe sex. In The Martini Shot, a novella by George Pelecanos, screenwriter of the much admired television series The Wire, there is every risk of a bad hair day ensuing. After ructions in the living room “with my feet against the scrolled arm of the couch for leverage”, and on and off the four-poster bed – “Moonlight and candlelight are a heady aphrodisiac and I kept the curtains open at all times” – the narrator very properly worries about his lover’s hair. “‘Thank you,’ I said, my hand still in her hair. I must have been twisting it. It was a mess.”
The Literary Review will announce the winner on December 1, at a party at the carefully chosen venue, London’s In and Out Club.
Comments (…)
Sign in or create your Guardian account to join the discussion