The nominees for the bad sex awards are however not the hack writers of by-the-numbers pulp however. Many are considered Proper Writers, the kind whose prose bring critics to orgasm and inevitable post-modern open-endedness.
Why do ostensibly good writers fail so badly when they get to a scene featuring wobbly bits getting friction-y? Just like the mystery of the Loch Ness Monster or the continued popularity of Steve Hofmeyr, we may never know the answer. It can't be because authors are antisocial misanthropes who never get any; Salman Rushdie, for example, was married to professional food-pornographer Padma Lakshmi, and still managed to describe a woman down below as a "pot of fire". Sounds like an infection waiting to happen.
Perhaps it's because, outside of having it, sex is inherently comical. All the reverent prose and poetic imagery in the world can't overcome the inherent silliness of it all. Instead, it emphasises it.
Without any further ado, I present a few choice extracts from this year's nominees:
"Faster, harder, faster, harder. The room began to shake. Just faintly at first, like a mild constant tremor, like the edge of a far distant earthquake. The French door trembled in its frame. A glass rattled on the bathroom shelf. The floor quivered. The hall door creaked and shuttered. My shoes hopped and moved. The bedhead hammered against the wall. The floor shook hard. The walls boomed. Coins in my abandoned pocket tinkled."
And then the roof caved in and they learned fucking in an earthquake was a dumb thing to do
"Her breasts were perfect hemispheres. Her nipples were not overly large, and they were soft, still quietly groping for the maturity that was to come. Her breasts themselves were large, however, and fully ripe. They seemed to be virtually uninfluenced by the force of gravity, the nipples turned beautifully upward, like a vine's new tendrils seeking sunlight."
Sex with Poison Ivy can be a bit strange
"For a moment, two moments, three, we're part of the same organism: some outrageous sea creature washed up and tangled on the shore, terrifying beautiful, beyond hope."
What kind of sea creature? A jellyfish? A giant squid? An isopod?
"'Bravo!' he called out, the words muffled by his lady's breast. 'Bravo, everybody. Well done!'"
This man is a 19th century gentleman cricketer, I'm sure of it
And all I'm willing to post of Christo Tsiolkas' offering is a single line because the whole thing is truly vile: "I was immersed in the slush of her moist meat."
Whoever's running the Literary Review twitter looks like they're having an absolute whale of a time.
No comments:
Post a Comment