There’s a lot of awkward writing in novels, particularly when it comes to sex. In the U.K. they’ve done something about it: they’ve created the Bad Sex in Fiction Award. Keep reading for scintillating excerpts from some of the nominees.
Some famous U.S. authors were nominated this year, including John Updike, Paul Theroux and Tama Janowitz. In “Peyton Amberg,” Janowitz says a lover’s foreplay is “as if he was searching for lost car keys.”
Some writers can never forget that humans are basically primates. In “Too Beautiful for You,” Rod Liddle describes an orgasm this way: “She came with the exhilarating whoops and pant-hoots of a troop of Rhesus monkeys, which was flattering, if alarming.”
In writing?as in sex?some writers just try too hard. Paolo Coelho writes in “Eleven Minutes” that “I was the earth, the mountains, the tigers, the rivers that flowed into the lakes, the lake that became the sea.”
And the winner? India’s Aniruddha Bahal, for this passage from his novel “Bunker 13”: “She is topping up your engine oil for the cross-country coming up. Your RPM is hitting a new high. To wait any longer would be to lose prime time…She picks up a Bugatti’s momentum. You want her more at a Volkswagen’s steady trot. Squeeze the maximum mileage out of your gallon of gas. But she’s eating up the road with all cylinders blazing.”
This combines two of men’s favorite subjects: cars and sex. Now if he could only find a way to get some football metaphors in there?.
If you want good sex writing, check out Whitley’s vampires!
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