{"id":1372,"date":"2010-12-05T12:34:53","date_gmt":"2010-12-05T16:34:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/?p=1372"},"modified":"2010-12-05T12:34:53","modified_gmt":"2010-12-05T16:34:53","slug":"bad-sex-2010-dead-bugs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/2010\/12\/05\/bad-sex-2010-dead-bugs\/","title":{"rendered":"Bad Sex 2010: Dead Bugs, Pencils & Giant She Creatures"},"content":{"rendered":"

Each year Britain's Literary Review\u00a0<\/em>honors a mainstream author with \"The Bad Sex In Fiction Award.\"<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0 The award\u00a0goes to writers whose descriptions of sexual antics and activity inspire \"eye-rolling and disgust.\"\u00a0<\/p>\n

This year, Rowan Somerville won the award for descriptions in his book, \"The Shape of Her.\"\u00a0\u00a0Passages like the following secured him the honor:<\/p>\n

Like a lepidopterist mounting a tough-skinned insect with a too blunt pin he screwed himself into her.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As if that wasn't good enough to secure the best of the bad prize, elsewhere in the book Somerville describes a nipple as \"the nose of the loveliest nocturnal animal, sniffing in the night.\"<\/p>\n

Some other big literary names were on the list of nominees, including Jonathan Franzen for his book Freedom <\/em>which included the following passage<\/a>:<\/p>\n

One afternoon, as Connie described it, her excited clitoris grew to be eight inches long, a protruding pencil of tenderness with which she gently parted the lips of his penis and drove herself down to the base of its shaft.\u00a0 Another day, at her urging, Joey described to her the sleek warm neatness of her turds as they slid from her anus and fell into his open mouth, where, since these were only words, they tasted like excellent, dark chocolate.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Another nominee was Adam Ross for descriptions in his book, Mr. Peanut<\/a><\/em>.\u00a0 Including a passage\u00a0where a husband describes his love for his wife's \"giganticness\" and said if he made love to her from behind he felt like \"an X-rated Gulliver among the Brobdingnags.\"\u00a0\u00a0Ross writes,<\/p>\n

She was not his wife but a giant she-creature, an overlarge sex pet:\u00a0 his to screw, groom and maintain.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In accepting the award, Somerville was gracious and stated<\/a> that he felt it was fitting because, \"There is nothing more English than bad sex.\"<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I\u00a0write Regency Romance<\/a>\u00a0 that is not exactly regular Regency.\u00a0 My books are Regency<\/a>, twisted, tangled and taken way over the top<\/a>. My books are romances\u00a0that\u00a0revel in\u00a0the Regency Rules and revile them.\u00a0Often in my books the rules\u00a0are part of the wall keeping the hero from the heroine.\u00a0 So in my tales the hero\u00a0rips down the wall and lays it at the heroine's feet as public proof of his devotion.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But, say it ain't so, Rowan.\u00a0 The English - bad lovers?\u00a0 Well, that's not the way they're written in Regency.\u00a0 The Lords and Ladies, the Dukes and Earls may be rogues and cads; they may, in fact, be perfect pricks. But\u00a0they're not\u00a0written as bad lovers.\u00a0 In social lore it's the French and the Italians who are the great lovers.\u00a0\u00a0That lore has not translated to romance novels.\u00a0 In romance novels the French or Italian\u00a0will be the bad guy.\u00a0 The forever after hero, the heroine's perfect love?\u00a0 Well, he'll\u00a0probably be British, thank you very much.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Why?\u00a0 If the reality is that the Frenchman is the perfect lover and the Brit is the buffoon, then why have romance novels written it all very differently?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Well, romances are products of the culture of the writers.\u00a0 In American\u00a0culture we may find the French and Italian man's culture of \"sharing the love\" interesting, but we don't find it admirable.\u00a0 The \"romance\" cultures of France and Italy are perceived as being\u00a0places where men have revolving doors in their bedrooms.\u00a0 And women don't find that romantic.\u00a0 The English cad or rogue would just be one of the boys in France.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

See, it'\u00a0s those rules again.\u00a0 The rules that I love my heroes to rebel against.\u00a0 The rules are only worthy of rebelling against\u00a0if they were important\u00a0to forming the hero's life and past. \u00a0Those rules made the hero who he is and within the rules lie a code of honor.\u00a0 If a hero is not honorable, he'll never\u00a0get the girl in a romance novel.\u00a0 Because to Americans, honor is sexy.<\/p>\n

The UK's \"Independent\" published a piece<\/a> on the awards\u00a0that included the phrase - \"Bad Sex, Please, We're British...\"\u00a0 In the piece they call the Bad Sex Award a peculiarly British form of disapproval that grew out of the notion that \"sex and literature made for uncomfortable bedfellows.\"\u00a0\u00a0The independent piece says the awards are proof of their opposite - that if bad sex writing exists, then so does good sex writing.\u00a0 The piece notes that the bad sex\u00a0prose tends to occur in describing the act itself. The piece advocates the view that sex is more fully represented in literature once you go beyond the act itself, and include all of the things the act encompasses.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I agree with that viewpoint, actually.\u00a0 To me,\u00a0the sexiest writing of all happens in the parts of the book where the hero and the heroine aren't having sex.\u00a0 The first meeting, the flirtations, the first kiss are all fodder for mighty sexy stuff.\u00a0 But I find the pinnacle of sexiness to be stories where there's an extended period when the hero wants the heroine, he needs the heroine, he desires her far more than his next breath - but he can't have her.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The agony of frustrated desire is mighty heady stuff.\u00a0 It's like Christmas - the most fun is in the anticipation.<\/p>\n

Still, I wonder if we should all work harder to make our writing worthy of a bad sex award.\u00a0 In bad sex terms, I think that there's way too much territory we haven't yet explored.\u00a0 Dead bugs, pencils and giant she-creatures are all well and bad, but we could do much worse.\u00a0 How about kitchen implements?\u00a0 There's really not enough romantic descriptions comparing the act to a kitchen device or appliance.\u00a0\u00a0How about - I processed her faster than a Cuisinart.\u00a0 Or - I made her froth faster than\u00a0a hand blender.\u00a0 It could be - I kept her as hot and wet as an immersion circulator.\u00a0 How about - she made me come like a dishwasher on the rinse cycle.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The British like to think they're good at bad sex but I think they're really too good to be bad enough to take top prize.\u00a0 Maybe the French and the Italians could earn honorable mentions in the category, but I don't think anybody can do bad in as\u00a0big and brash a way as an American.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Comparing having sex to pinning a dead bug on a board is pretty bad, but I think we could do much worse.\u00a0 Kitchen implements, anyone?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Each year Britain's Literary Review\u00a0honors a mainstream author with \"The Bad Sex In Fiction Award.\"\u00a0\u00a0 The award\u00a0goes to writers whose descriptions of sexual antics and activity inspire \"eye-rolling and disgust.\"\u00a0 This year, Rowan Somerville won the award for descriptions in his book, \"The Shape of Her.\"\u00a0\u00a0Passages like the following secured him the honor: Like a ...continue reading \"Bad Sex 2010: Dead Bugs, Pencils & Giant She Creatures\"<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,9,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1372"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1372"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1377,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1372\/revisions\/1377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}