Comments on: Is Jonathan Lethem Courting a 2009 Bad Sex Award With These Lines From ‘Chronic City’?

By: 1minutebookreviewswordpresscom

1minutebookreviewswordpresscom — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 03:48:27 +0000

knightofswords: Right. It may have been great sex, but you get no sense of it from the writing.

pseudoswashbuckler: And you have to wonder if sex in a hanging chair is even so “odd” by today’s standards …

Wonder if you’ll both think Lethem’s passage is better or worse than those that make the Bad Sex shortlist (to which I’ll post a link as soon as it becomes available)? What’s disheartening about this one from Chronic City is that it isn’t even grammatically correct because of the dangling modifier (“Remembering it, Richard’s crotch”). Some Bad Sex winners have been deeply purple or awkward but at least had no obvious errors.

By: pseudoswashbuckler

pseudoswashbuckler — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:51:05 +0000

Good thing he clarifies how “the situation was wildly odd and erotic.” If not for that, then I would have in my innocence thought he just wanted to describe a really neat chair.

By: knightofswords

knightofswords — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 21:43:52 +0000

Maybe it’s actually good sex, though badly written.

By: 1minutebookreviewswordpresscom

1minutebookreviewswordpresscom — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 18:26:35 +0000

Maybe you’ve given Jonathan Lethem inspiration for his next novel? What’s startling about this passage is that there’s so little difference between it and the prose in many romance novels.

If you removed Lethem’s name and asked a group of critics to guess who had written it, more than a few might say “Nora Roberts.”

By: Jon

Jon — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 04:21:34 +0000

If only he’d worked in the word “splayed” instead of “spilling over” it would have been a certain win. But it’s going to be tough to beat that second quote.