9:55 pm - 12/08/2011
Ed King, by David Guterson!
What’s more cringe-worthy: Haruki Murakami’s comparison of “a freshly made ear” to “a freshly made vagina” or the scene from “Ed King,” David Guterson’s modern retelling of the Oedipus myth, in which the title character ends 12 hours of marathon lovemaking with his mother with one last quickie in the shower?
According to the U.K.’s Literary Review, it’s definitely the shower. The journal has awarded Guterson (also the author of “Snow Falling on Cedars”), its Bad Sex in Fiction Award for 2011. (Whether either finalist really compares to Rowan Somerville’s now-infamous 2010 sentence — “Like a lepidopterist mounting a tough-skinned insect with a too blunt pin he screwed himself into her” — is another question entirely.)
The novel’s “victory” might not surprise readers and reviewers; as GalleyCat’s Jason Boog points out, Ron Charles of the Washington Post anticipated that its awkward descriptions of an awkward encounter might make it a strong contender for the prize.
These two paragraphs from “Ed King,” specifically cited on the Literary Review’s website, helped bring home the prize:
These sorts of gyrations and five-sense choreographies, with variations on Ed’s main themes, played out episodically between 10 p.m. and 10 a.m., when Diane said, “Let’s shower.”
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. After a while he shut his eyes, and Diane, wielding her fingernails now and staring at his face, helped him out with two practiced hands, one squeezing the family jewels, the other vigorous with the soap-and-warm-water treatment. It didn’t take long for the beautiful and perfect Ed King to ejaculate for the fifth time in 12 hours, while looking like a Roman public-bath statuary. Then they rinsed, dried, dressed and went to an expensive restaurant for lunch.
In a recent essay for the Financial Times, Literary Review senior editor Jonathan Beckman called the prize “a comic coda to the literary year and a gentle spoof of a culture in which awards have proliferated at speed.” He added: “Despite murmurings to the contrary, the mere presence of a sex scene does not inevitably lead to a pillorying. Every year we rule out many examples sent to us by enthusiastic readers on the grounds of utter competence.”
Earlier this year, Salon published its first Good Sex Awards, judged by Laura Miller, Louis Bayard, Maud Newton and Walter Kirn.
Original Nominees post here
SOURCE
Well....what do you think ONTD?
And the winner of The worst sex writing of the year award is.....
Ed King, by David Guterson!
What’s more cringe-worthy: Haruki Murakami’s comparison of “a freshly made ear” to “a freshly made vagina” or the scene from “Ed King,” David Guterson’s modern retelling of the Oedipus myth, in which the title character ends 12 hours of marathon lovemaking with his mother with one last quickie in the shower?
According to the U.K.’s Literary Review, it’s definitely the shower. The journal has awarded Guterson (also the author of “Snow Falling on Cedars”), its Bad Sex in Fiction Award for 2011. (Whether either finalist really compares to Rowan Somerville’s now-infamous 2010 sentence — “Like a lepidopterist mounting a tough-skinned insect with a too blunt pin he screwed himself into her” — is another question entirely.)
The novel’s “victory” might not surprise readers and reviewers; as GalleyCat’s Jason Boog points out, Ron Charles of the Washington Post anticipated that its awkward descriptions of an awkward encounter might make it a strong contender for the prize.
These two paragraphs from “Ed King,” specifically cited on the Literary Review’s website, helped bring home the prize:
These sorts of gyrations and five-sense choreographies, with variations on Ed’s main themes, played out episodically between 10 p.m. and 10 a.m., when Diane said, “Let’s shower.”
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. After a while he shut his eyes, and Diane, wielding her fingernails now and staring at his face, helped him out with two practiced hands, one squeezing the family jewels, the other vigorous with the soap-and-warm-water treatment. It didn’t take long for the beautiful and perfect Ed King to ejaculate for the fifth time in 12 hours, while looking like a Roman public-bath statuary. Then they rinsed, dried, dressed and went to an expensive restaurant for lunch.
In a recent essay for the Financial Times, Literary Review senior editor Jonathan Beckman called the prize “a comic coda to the literary year and a gentle spoof of a culture in which awards have proliferated at speed.” He added: “Despite murmurings to the contrary, the mere presence of a sex scene does not inevitably lead to a pillorying. Every year we rule out many examples sent to us by enthusiastic readers on the grounds of utter competence.”
Earlier this year, Salon published its first Good Sex Awards, judged by Laura Miller, Louis Bayard, Maud Newton and Walter Kirn.
Original Nominees post here
SOURCE
Well....what do you think ONTD?
Alright now everybody grab some rubbers.
She could win a host of other awards, though:
-'worst treatment of sex in fiction'
-'worst treatment of gender in fiction'
-'worst [insert anything here] in fiction'
Gurl just faded to black.
But <3 at icon. Lancelot can emerge from my lake any day.
(bizarre sex euphemisms post?)
I guess more ~authorly~ terms showcase greater literary skill, but I just appreciated someone using a real word instead of "magical love flower" or some bullshit.
Yeah, read that one in a book the other day. Or something like it.
why does nobody make a bigger deal that he is turned on my her breast milk?
"the sight of their arousal was arousing" is nothing short of brilliant writing IMHO
that and the fact that Jon and Robb are 14 when the books start. Thankfully since I watched the show first I can picture them as Kit and Richard, but it just makes it all the more awkward when I remember how young they're supposed to be.
Tho i've never read it the sneak peek was ... just no!
Just stay out of UF/PNR and I'm good - I read them, ns2s.