{"id":2043,"date":"2011-12-10T16:49:59","date_gmt":"2011-12-10T21:49:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/?p=2043"},"modified":"2011-12-10T18:11:07","modified_gmt":"2011-12-10T23:11:07","slug":"front-parlors-back-doors-fresh-ears-fresh-vaginas-it-must-be-the-2011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/2011\/12\/10\/front-parlors-back-doors-fresh-ears-fresh-vaginas-it-must-be-the-2011\/","title":{"rendered":"Front Parlors, Back Doors, Bonking Heads, Fresh Ears &#038; Fresh Vaginas- It must be BAD SEX AWARD Time"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This is the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/books\/2011\/nov\/22\/bad-sex-awards-the-contenders\" target=\"_blank\">19th Year <\/a>that London's Literary Review has handed out a prize known as the Bad Sex Award.\u00a0 Basically, it honors the \"<a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/books\/fiction\" target=\"_blank\">worst sex scene of the year.\"\u00a0 <\/a>\u00a0\u00a0 The prize was established in 1993 to highlight and discourage the \"<a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/uk\/2011\/dec\/06\/david-guterson-bad-sex-award?newsfeed=true\" target=\"_blank\">crude, tasteless, and often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in contemporary novels\".<\/a>\u00a0The award itself is a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/12\/09\/world\/europe\/david-guterson-wins-bad-sex-in-fiction-award-for-ed-king.html\" target=\"_blank\">plaster foot <\/a>\"which is supposed to represent something to do with sex, though no one seems sure what\".\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>It's not a list you'd expect to see Stephen King, James Frey and Lee Child on - now is it?\u00a0 But they were just\u00a03 of the nominated authors.\u00a0 The full list includes:\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>1Q84 by Haruki Murakami<\/li>\n<li>On Canaan\u2019s Side by Sebastian Barry<\/li>\n<li>The Final Testament of the Holy Bible by James Frey<\/li>\n<li>Parallel Stories by P\u00e9ter N\u00e1das<\/li>\n<li>11.22.63 by Stephen King<\/li>\n<li>Ed King by David Guterson<\/li>\n<li>The Land of Painted Caves by Jean M Auel<\/li>\n<li>The Affair by Lee Child<\/li>\n<li>Dead Europe by Christos Tsiolkas<\/li>\n<li>Outside the Ordinary World by Dori Ostermiller<\/li>\n<li>Everything Beautiful Began After by Simon Van Booy<\/li>\n<li>The Great Night by Chris Adrian.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This year's prize was won by David Guterson for \"Ed King,\" which is described as a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/12\/09\/world\/europe\/david-guterson-wins-bad-sex-in-fiction-award-for-ed-king.html\" target=\"_blank\">\"reimagining of Oedipus Rex\". \u00a0<\/a>\u00a0 With that book, should Mr. Guterson have been surprised to win the tongue-in-cheek honor?\u00a0 One thinks ----- not.\u00a0 The author wasn't surprised, as it turns out.\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/12\/09\/world\/europe\/david-guterson-wins-bad-sex-in-fiction-award-for-ed-king.html\" target=\"_blank\">\"Mr. Guterson sent a message: <\/a>\u201cOedipus practically invented bad sex, so I\u2019m not in the least bit surprised.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In the ceremony where the award was presented to Guterson - or someone on behalf of his publisher, Bloomsbury,\u00a0 the judges said Guterson's sex scene won because of its\u00a0\u00a0\u201cuncertain register, euphemism and ineffective irony,\u201d particularly in the part where \u201cshe abused him with a bar of soap.\u201d\u00a0 Parts of the entry that snagged Guterson the prize can be read <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/books\/2011\/nov\/25\/david-guterson-bad-sex-award\" target=\"_blank\">here.\u00a0 <\/a>\u00a0 I haven't read Guterson's book, but the description of the \"no man's land\" between a woman's \"front parlor\" and \"back door\" made me want to scream at the author to remind him that even if a book isn't a romance, a sex scene should always carry some emotion\u00a0for the love of all ducks in the universe.\u00a0 It shouldn't ever read like confusing directions from the guy at the gas station.\u00a0 Romance has truly gone by the wayside when a\u00a0character in the middle of a sex scene makes observations like\u00a0\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/12\/09\/world\/europe\/david-guterson-wins-bad-sex-in-fiction-award-for-ed-king.html\" target=\"_blank\">\u201ca freshly made ear and a freshly made vagina look very much alike\u201d.<\/a>\u00a0 That one's from Murakami's 1Q84, by the way.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>One of the authors nominated this year had the dubious honor of having been nominated before.\u00a0 Christos Tsiolkas, whose \"Dead Europe\" was nominated this year, responded last year to his prior nomination\u00a0for \"The Slap\" by speculating that the judges had <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/12\/09\/world\/europe\/david-guterson-wins-bad-sex-in-fiction-award-for-ed-king.html\" target=\"_blank\">\"weird formative sex experiences at Eton\".\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0As Tsiolkas' comment was mentioned at this year's ceremony at London's In and Out Club, a member of the audience noted that the author's theory sounded \"completely reasonable.\"\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The books' highly sexed leading characters are <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/12\/09\/world\/europe\/david-guterson-wins-bad-sex-in-fiction-award-for-ed-king.html\" target=\"_blank\">compared to<\/a>\u00a0\"wakening beasts, lightning rods, outrageous sea creatures and \u201cthe midnight train.\u201d <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.co.uk\/2011\/11\/22\/bad-sex-awards-literary-review_n_1107149.html\" target=\"_blank\">Quotes from this year's nominees include: <\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\"In the shower, Ed stood with his hands at the back of his head, like someone just arrested, while she abused him with a bar of soap.\" (Ed King\/Guterson)<\/p>\n<p>\"She was wearing jeans. The fabric whispered under my palm. She leaned back and her head bonked on the door. 'Ouch!' I said. 'Are you all right?'\" (11.22.63\/King)<\/p>\n<p>\"[Her breasts] seemed to be virtually uninfluenced by the force of gravity, the nipples turned beautifully upward, like a vine's new tendrils seeking sunlight.\" (1Q84\/Murakami)<\/p>\n<p>\"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.\" (The Affair\/Child)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">None of my books has made the list yet. I think that's because I can't write a sex scene without\u00a0remembering that romance isn't about sex - sex is about romance.\u00a0 Likely, my books also haven't made the list\u00a0because the judges haven't heard of me --- yet.\u00a0 But you never know - my books on Amazon are selling quite well in the UK so next year might be my year.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">If next year's my year I'll\u00a0begin my acceptance speech\u00a0by commenting on the trophy and suggesting where\u00a0they might put their foot....<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is the 19th Year that London's Literary Review has handed out a prize known as the Bad Sex Award.\u00a0 Basically, it honors the \"worst sex scene of the year.\"\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 The prize was established in 1993 to highlight and discourage the \"crude, tasteless, and often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in <a href=\"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/2011\/12\/10\/front-parlors-back-doors-fresh-ears-fresh-vaginas-it-must-be-the-2011\/\" class=\"more-link\">...continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> \"Front Parlors, Back Doors, Bonking Heads, Fresh Ears &#038; Fresh Vaginas- It must be BAD SEX AWARD Time\"<\/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],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2043"}],"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=2043"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2043\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2052,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2043\/revisions\/2052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}