Who's going to win this year's Bad Sex Award?

[kelber at mindspring.com]

This could be the award ceremony that Pynchon'll actually show up for.  Let's root for him!

Laura

-----Original Message-----
>From: Joe Allonby <joeallonby at gmail.com>
>Sent: Nov 29, 2006 2:26 PM
>To: Dave Monroe <monropolitan at yahoo.com>
>Cc: pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: Re: Who's going to win this year's Bad Sex Award?
>
>Quick! What page is the dogggie sex scene on?
>
>On 11/29/06, Dave Monroe <monropolitan at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>> Who's going to win this year's Bad Sex Award?
>> POSTED: 12:53 p.m. EST, November 29, 2006
>>
>> LONDON, England (AP) -- Will the winner be the
>> unfortunate canine encounter, the tryst in a
>> blacksmith's forge or the girl with the Space Hopper
>> breasts?
>>
>> Eight authors, including Booker Prize nominee David
>> Mitchell, best seller Mark Haddon and literary
>> maverick Thomas Pynchon, were competing Wednesday for
>> one of the world's least-coveted literary prizes --
>> the Bad Sex in Fiction Award.
>>
>> Rocker Courtney Love was recruited to announce the
>> winner at a London ceremony.
>>
>> Now in its 14th year, the award was established by
>> Literary Review magazine to celebrate truly
>> cringe-worthy erotic writing.
>>
>> "It's mixed metaphors, embarrassing fumbling. It's the
>> redundancy of the scene in an otherwise good novel,"
>> said assistant editor Philip Womack.
>>
>> Judges say the award's mandate is "to draw attention
>> to the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of
>> redundant passages of sexual description in the modern
>> novel, and to discourage it."
>>
>> In the latter aim, it has failed. This year's crop of
>> finalists includes passages as lurid and ludicrous as
>> any in memory.
>>
>> Tim Willcocks' medieval action novel, "The Religion,"
>> features a scene in which characters grapple
>> passionately in a forge "across the cold steel face of
>> the anvil."
>>
>> "In the pit of his stomach a cauldron boiled and some
>> seething and nameless brew rose up through his spine
>> and filled his brain with the Devil's Fire," Willcocks
>> writes.
>>
>> Mitchell's 1980s coming-of-age story, "Black Swan
>> Green," has been praised by critics. But Bad Sex
>> judges were drawn to a passage in which one
>> character's breasts are compared to "a pair of
>> Danishes" and another's to "two Space Hoppers."
>>
>> Pynchon's long-awaited, 1,000-page novel, "Against the
>> Day," is nominated for a scene involving a spaniel
>> that ends: "Reader, she bit him."
>>
>> Haddon, author of "The Curious Incident of the Dog in
>> the Night-time," is nominated for his description of
>> rapture in his latest novel, "A Spot of Bother":
>> "Images went off in her head like little fireworks.
>> The smell of coconut. Brass firedogs."
>>
>> The other finalists are Scottish writer Irvine Welsh's
>> "Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs"; Julia Glass'
>> "The Whole World Over"; Iain Hollingshead's
>> "Twentysomething"; Michael Cannon's "Lachlan's War";
>> "Tourism" by Nirpal Singh Dhaliwal; and Will Self's
>> "The Book of Dave."
>>
>> Winners receive a "semiabstract statuette representing
>> Sex in the 1950s" and a bottle of champagne -- but
>> only if they show up at the ceremony. In the past,
>> most have.
>>
>> "It's a very jolly affair," Womack said. "It's not
>> meant to humiliate."
>>
>> Last year's winner was food critic and novelist Giles
>> Coren for a memorable passage comparing a male
>> character's genitalia to a shower hose. In 2004, the
>> prize went to Tom Wolfe's novel "I Am Charlotte
>> Simmons" for sex scenes the judges called "ghastly ...
>> inept ... (and) unrealistic."
>>
>> http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/books/11/29/books.badsex.ap/index.html
>>
>>
>>
>>
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