Here’s the worst of the bad. Enjoy! [Content warning! While it’s bad, it’s still badly described sex, sort of.] Okay, I put the examples after the jump just to protect those who need the protection 😉 Dec/Jan 09/10 cover Steel yourselves…

Jonathan Littell has won the seventeenth annual Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction Award, for The Kindly Ones (Chatto & Windus). The prize (a plaster foot) was presented by award-winning actor Charles Dance. It was accepted on Littell’s behalf by his editor at Chatto & Windus, Alison Samuel…

The judges used the occasion to praise an ambitious and impressive novel. They said: ‘It is in part a work of genius. However, a mythologically inspired passage and lines such as “I came suddenly, a jolt that emptied my head like a spoon scraping the inside of a soft-boiled egg” clinched the award for The Kindly Ones. We hope he takes it in good humour.’

Jonathan Littell was unavailable for comment. The winning passage is quoted below:

Her vulva was opposite my face. The small lips protruded slightly from the pale, domed flesh. This sex was watching at me, spying on me, like a Gorgon’s head, like a motionless Cyclops whose single eye never blinks. Little by little this silent gaze penetrated me to the marrow. My breath sped up and I stretched out my hand to hide it: I no longer saw it, but it still saw me and stripped me bare (whereas I was already naked). If only I could still get hard, I thought, I could use my prick like a stake hardened in the fire, and blind this Polyphemus who made me Nobody. But my cock remained inert, I seemed turned to stone. I stretched out my arm and buried my middle finger into this boundless eye. The hips moved slightly, but that was all. Far from piercing it, I had on the contrary opened it wide, freeing the gaze of the eye still hiding behind it. Then I had an idea: I took out my finger and, dragging myself forward on my forearms, I pushed my forehead against this vulva, pressing my scar against the hole. Now I was the one looking inside, searching the depths of this body with my radiant third eye, as her own single eye irradiated me and we blinded each other mutually: without moving, I came in an immense splash of white light, as she cried out: ‘What are you doing, what are you doing?’ and I laughed out loud, sperm still gushing in huge spurts from my penis, jubilant, I bit deep into her vulva to swallow it whole, and my eyes finally opened, cleared, and saw everything.

Yep, that’s bad.

And there’s more! The Guardian: The bad sex factor: extracts from the prize shortlist

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3 Comments | Leave a comment
  1. lord-ruler says:

    I was trying to write some trashy porn featuring Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi but I am just not talented. You will have to settle for a Winston Churchill Joke.

    “One day, Winston Churchill went to the bathroom and ran into the head of the Labour Party, who was his political opponent. Churchill took the urinal furthest from him. The head of the Labour Party asked Churchill if he was just being modest. Churchill responded, “Not at all. It’s just that whenever you Labourite chaps see something that is large, privately owned and working well, you want to nationalize it.”

    And here is another good one.

    A lady who was known as Churchill’s main rival in parliament was giving a speech. Churchill, with his usual enthusiasm for his rival, dozed off while the lady was speaking. She stopped her speech and awoke Sir Winston by yelling, “Mr. Churchill, must you sleep while I talk?” Churchill sleepily replied, “No, ma’am. I do so purely by choice.”

  2. snit3 says:

    I believe this fellow, Littel, may have dropped one too many tabs of acid.

  3. Kelly says:

    Who would have thought that the imagery of a Gorgon’s head and Cyclops couldn’t be sexy, huh? Good lord, that was bad.

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