The Bad Sex in Fiction Award 2005

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www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/003200512021819.htm

Giles Coren has won this award which serves "to draw attention to the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel."

His debut novel, Winkler, included a passage in which included a description of the main character's penis "leaping around like a shower dropped in an empty bath" .

Judges said: "It was the overexcited shower which clinched it for Giles. That and the endlessly long sentence, which squirms and wriggles like the shower head."

[sgt.null]

'Memories of My Melancholy Whores'
Gabriel Garcia Marquez

now really, could anything good come from a back as badly titled?

[Fist and Faith]

I knew a girl once. She had a head like a melon, and a face like a collie. I called her my melon-collie baby.

[sgt.null]

ack.

"it was a dark and stormy night, she was exhausted from running around my head all night. she screamed like a wounded polecat at the moment of climax. a shot rang out..."

[Spring]

books.guardian.co.uk/departments/genera ... 12,00.html

That is the longlist.

[sgt.null]

thanks, it was horrible.

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Those are so bad that I think even Harold Robbins might be turning in his grave! I think Coren's a worthy winner though. That judge wasn't kidding either, there are 138 words in that sentence! My high school English teacher would've pistol-whipped me if I wrote a sentence that long.

[I'm Murrin]

That... that is just horrible.

[Lady Revel]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Horrible....and funny!

[sgt.null]

makes me feel better about my work.

[Variol Farseer]

The Coren was a prime example of what B.R. Myers, in A Reader's Manifesto, called an andelope: a string of dull declarative sentences, hitched together like railway cars with an endless succession of ands. (Were you hearing 'Conjunction Junction' as you read Coren's piece?) My fourth-grade teacher put her class through an exercise in which we ceremoniously buried the word and, precisely to warn us against such horrors. Can it be that Coren never got as far as the fourth grade?

The sad truth is that this stuff is just plain old bad writing. Bad writing about anything else is simply a bore; but when it's about sex, a notoriously difficult subject to handle well, it becomes ludicrous; it blossoms into kitsch.

[Dragonlily]

It's awards time again. Does anyone have a nominee for this year? Duchess, I got the impression you might.

[duchess of malfi]

I read a real sex scene stinker of a book by Laurell K. Hamilton...it was the latest in her Anita Blake mystery/horror series. Lots of really dry and clinically described sex scenes. How can you make orgies so boring??? But I swear that some of it was copied and pasted from some of her previous books.

That one should surely deserve a nomination for bad sex scenes.

[Dragonlily]

Would that be DANSE MACABRE?

[duchess of malfi]

Yes, I believe that would be the one.

[Dragonlily]

You could notate this Award in the blog.

[onewyteduck]

Duchess, while agree with you wholeheartedly about Laurell Hamilton and bad sex scenes what I want to know is how in the hell you've even managed to make it that far in the series? I think I quit in disgust after the 4th one!

If you take away the bad sex scenes, you'd have no story left and the only character worth a damn is Jean Claude. But, that's just my opinion!

[duchess of malfi]

I only actually enjoyed the first few books. The last truly readable one was about the eighth - Obsidian Butterfly, which was set in Albuquerque, a city I have a lot of affection for. It still had too many needless descriptions of men's private parts, but managed to have a plot.

The first books in the series were these tightly plotted little mystery stories that I enjoyed.

I kept hoping she will get back to that - or at least to including a plot in the book!

This last one was the last straw for me. It was bad. It was really bad. It stunk as bad as elephant maure at the zoo it was so bad! There was literally nothing but poorly written sex scenes.

I certainly enjoy well written sex scenes in books, as long as they are part of the plot and help in character development.

But we are talking bad sex scenes instead of a plot, and no character development at all.

This may be the greatest "author loses it mid-series" fantasy/horror/mystery series in the history of the written word.

And the thing that drives me nuts is that this woman is anything but a hack writer. She is actually a very good writer - some of her short stories are simply wonderful. In fact, the two best short stories I read last year were both written by her.

[I'm Murrin]

There's actually been some discussion going round on the net about her recently--apparently some people had been posting on her message board complaining about the decline in quality of her books, and she responded in a way that hasn't done much good for her.
Links, for the curious:
Hamilton's message.
Nick Mamatas comments.
Scalzi comments.
Hal Duncan offers his thoughts.
Scalzi thinks Hal may have missed the real problem.

[duchess of malfi]

Thank you Murrin. I especially appreciated what John Scalzi (one of my favorite new writers) had to say in that bottom link.