Comments on: Jonathan Littell Wins 2009 Bad Sex in Fiction Award — Read All the Shortlisted Passages Here

By: bippityboppityboom

bippityboppityboom — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 22:36:44 +0000

According to Jonathan Beckman at the Literary Review…[the bad sex award was] set up by Auberon Waugh in 1993 to “draw attention to the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel, and to discourage it”.

The award itself strikes me as being fairly tongue-in-cheek, but that quote makes the founder sound like something of a prude. I was listening to Norman Mailer talk to Michael Silverblatt on “Bookworm” the other day, and he was talking about how sex, excrement, etc., are things we all encounter, things not to be shied away from, but are instead to be explored. I must say that some of my favorite novelists seem to enjoy indulging in erotic depictions: John Updike, Philip Roth, to name a couple… In fact, some of our greatest writers seem to be nominated more often than lousy writers… just interesting to me.

By: 1minutebookreviewswordpresscom

1minutebookreviewswordpresscom — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 18:02:12 +0000

Amazing how creative some those writers are, isn’t it? Clearly where some of the shortlisted authors go wrong is that they try too hard to make sex “new.” Wonder if that guillotine is a first in recent literary fiction .

By: 1minutebookreviewswordpresscom

1minutebookreviewswordpresscom — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 17:59:41 +0000

True! Some of the bad-sex passages are good for, if nothing else, comic entertainment .

By: pseudoswashbuckler

pseudoswashbuckler — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 22:40:14 +0000

Ah, an up-and-comer pulls the upset on Philip Roth. The incorporation of a guillotine looks to have been a winning strategy.

By: questionof

questionof — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 09:18:50 +0000

Well, it has always been said that sex should be fun… And with these authors, it is!