Bad sex award shortlist

11/20/2009 08:54:00 am / The truth was spoken by Rich /

Hooray, Philip Roth is on the shortlist for the Literary Review's Bad Sex Award for a scene in his novel The Humbling involving three people and a green dildo.

I haven't researched this thoroughly, but it's a travesty if he hasn't been a mainstay of this list throughout his career.

I'm generally not enthusiastic about American Jewish fiction, but I've read a lot of his books mostly because of how filthy they are and with the exception of Portnoy's Complaint - which is mostly about wanking and therefore probably doesn't meet the criteria for this prestigious award - each and every one of them has left me a little short of breath and slightly uneasy about how much I enjoy his deviant sexual prose.

Sabbath's Theatre remains my favourite novel. The story of Micky Sabbath, a dirty old man ex-puppeteer, who goes mental after his long term mistress dies, a Polish woman with a sexual appetite to exceed his own who was often pissed on (even after her death) by Micky Sabbath and thrashed about in violent sexual encounters fueled by his jealousy and insatiable lust for kinky nookie.

Brilliant stuff. If there's a betting market for this award however, I think my £10 would be on Paul Theroux - father of Louis and Marcel Theroux - whose books are shit and rammed with perfunctory redundant sex scenes all littered with tedious clichéd sexual metaphors which are the very essence of this award - Neal's blog "entries" about Annabel Croft have more subtlety.

Labels:

0 comments:

Post a Comment