Bad Sex Gems and BL’s Deathless Legacy

Norman Mailer won it in 2007 for a passage from A Castle in the Forest, that goes, `Are you all right?' she cried out as he lay beside her, his breath going in and out with a rasp that sounded as terrible as the last winds of their lost children.

'All right. Yes. No,' he said. Then she was on him. She did not know if this would resuscitate him or end him, but the same spite, sharp as a needle, that had come to her after Fanni's death was in her again. Fanni had told her once what to do. So Klara turned head to foot, and put her most unmentionable part down on his hard-breathing nose and mouth, and took his old battering ram into her lips. Uncle was now as soft as a coil of excrement. ...'

Last year's nominees include John Updike for dirty descriptions in The Widows of Eastwick and Paulo Coelho for a spirited passage in Brida. Updike quit the game sometime back and wouldn't be bothered whether they give him the `Bad Sex in Fiction Award' but gentle Paulo, could have a sermon or two for the red-blooded editors at Literary Review who run this heart-warming contest. His salacious bit consisted of footpath sex in Brida which is "the moment when Eve was reabsorbed into Adam's body and the two halves became Creation" and climaxes with the über-orgasmic, “As if struck by a sacred bolt of lightning, she unleashed them, and the world, the seagulls, the taste of salt, the hard earth, the smell of the sea, the clouds, all disappeared, and in their place appeared a vast gold light, which grew and grew until it touched the most distant star in the galaxy."

There are many more absurd, crude and downright funny passages written and rewarded each year a fine sampling of which is available at the Literary Review site. This year’s contenders for the bad sex award in fiction included Thomas Pynchon, Will Self and Mark Haddon better known for his `The Curious Incident of the Dog at the Night Time’. Iain Hollingshead, won the award this year, which according to the award’s founder is given out `with the aim of gently dissuading authors and publishers from including unconvincing, perfunctory, embarrassing or redundant passages of a sexual nature in otherwise sound literary novels.’ Read the passage that clinched it, for this first-time writer.

Talking of tongue-in-cheek awards, awards that chastise or ones that poke fun, who can ignore Edward George Bulwer-Lytton’s lasting legacy. This 19^th century Englishman began his novel Paul Clifford with the momentous (and much abused),

"It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."

The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, each year, invites people to `compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels.’ Started in 1982, the contest now attracts thousands of entries in a number of categories, all striving to keep alive the legacy of this Englishman with the strange surname. Anyone can enter the contest electronically or otherwise.

This year the prize was won by a 55-year old writer, David McKenzie for composing this:

"Folks say that if you listen real close at the height of the full moon, when the wind is blowin' off Nantucket Sound from the nor' east and the dogs are howlin' for no earthly reason, you can hear the awful screams of the crew of the "Ellie May," a sturdy whaler Captained by John McTavish; for it was on just such a night when the rum was flowin' and, Davey Jones be damned, big John brought his men on deck for the first of several screaming contests."

The winner for the detective fiction category, appeals even more with this horrendously amusing,

``She walked into my office on legs as long as one of those long-legged birds that you see in Florida - the pink ones, not the white ones - except that she was standing on both of them, not just one of them, like those birds, the pink ones, and she wasn't wearing pink, but I knew right away that she was trouble, which those birds usually aren't.”

Lytton’s great-great-great-grandson is however not amused by the increasing popularity of the prize and recently threw a challenge to its founders for maligning his ancestor’s name. He said, "to have been the first person to have penned a cliché was a mark of genius". In fact, other than `dark and stormy night’ Bulwer-Lytton had created many over-abused marvels like, "the pen is mightier than the sword" and "the almighty dollar”. This Guardian article has followed this debate.

From the Ig Nobel Prize to the Razzies, there are a whole lot of chastising, tongue-in-cheek or downright bitchy honours given out each year. Just reading about them and could make a dull weekend exciting. The Wikipedia list for Ironic and humorous awards is a good starting point.

To top it off, with a bit more from the Bad Sex Awards, here is an entry that makes one laugh with its mock-profundity. This is from a novel called Will by Christopher Rush:

``O glorious pubes! The ultimate triangle, whose angles delve to hell but point to paradise. Let me sing the black banner, the blackbird's wing, the chink, the cleft, the keyhole in the door. The fig, the fanny, the cranny, the quim - I'd come close to it now, this sudden blush, this ancient avenue, the end of all odysseys and epic aim of life, pulling at my prick now, pulling like a lodestone …’’

And this gem from Absurdistan, by Gary Shteyngart (Granta),

"You wanna pop me?" she said. This must have been some new-fangled youth term. The verb "to pop."

"I wanna bust a nut inside you, shorty," I said. "I wanna make you sweat, boo. Let's do this thing."

Bulwer-Lytton image courtesy thedandy.org

Norman Mailer image courtesy Wikipedia