Bad sex, or good sex written badly? With added cheese.

December 3, 2013 9:00 AM

In the UK Guardian: Eight passages of raunchy prose are in contention for Literary Review's bad sex in fiction award. [some passages are ikky to read]

The Washington Post ran a piece on this a month back. Previous winners of the award, while Slate has some commentary on the writing of sexytimes.

Previously on MetaFilter, the 2012 awards.

posted by Wordshore (38 comments total)

Huh. Yes, it is that Woody Guthrie.
posted by Curious Artificer at 9:04 AM on December 3, 2013

Where is the "All of the Above" option?
posted by fullerine at 9:14 AM on December 3, 2013 [3 favorites]

The only way to win his game is not to play.
posted by Keith Talent at 9:18 AM on December 3, 2013

In defence of bad sex by Laurie Penny
posted by knapah at 9:24 AM on December 3, 2013 [9 favorites]

Awe-inspiring. These passages make the worst mary-sue I've ever suffered through seem tame by comparison.
posted by endotoxin at 9:28 AM on December 3, 2013

I'm groaning about vineyards.
posted by mochapickle at 9:31 AM on December 3, 2013

What, no Difference Engine by William Gibson & Bruce Sterling? Oh wait, that book was published before this list was started. But still, it should have gotten an honorary retroactive nod.

I have a pretty high tolerance for clunky bad sex in novels (skim it and move on, right?) but the sex scenes in the Difference Engine were just appallingly bad. And they went on forever.
posted by Elly Vortex at 9:34 AM on December 3, 2013

'male rod'

....

'sex yam'

'chap caber'

'punani plunger'

'manly mayonnaise bottle'

'virile gherkin'
posted by mippy at 9:34 AM on December 3, 2013

Rupert Thomson: for future reference, do not take time out to get specific about melons.
posted by thomas j wise at 9:35 AM on December 3, 2013 [3 favorites]

He was laid out before her, like a ripe buffet. She used her mouth like a snake using salad tongs, tasting each morsel. Shy and nervous, Michael raised his arm to block her probing, a human sneeze guard which Amy ignored. His distress increased and he wondered if he should alert the manager.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 9:37 AM on December 3, 2013 [12 favorites]

Metafilter: the pale-green variety I had bought in Naples once, and which had grown, so I was told, on the wild coast of Barbaria.
posted by jquinby at 9:50 AM on December 3, 2013

A few of these seem to be doing okay and then the last sentence is totally just... I can't stop giggling!
posted by Zalzidrax at 10:03 AM on December 3, 2013

Garth Marenghi: "As a horror writer there are certain words you don’t use when you’re writing a sex scene: balls, knickers, scrote. It’s not clever, it’s not sexy, it’s bad writing. {...} Where's 'He glided in liquid smooth'? Where's her 'wispy mound'?'
posted by Doktor Zed at 10:13 AM on December 3, 2013 [3 favorites]

I despise the bad sex in fiction award. This year I'm particularly irritated by it, because the only title on the nominee list I've read, My Education, I've been raving about for months. It contains some of the best sex writing I've read in literary fiction. It's a novel that treats sex as one of its primary subjects, so there's a lot of explicit sex writing, and perhaps some of it falls flat. But god, Choi is actually trying to write about women's desires in a physically embodied way, in a genre that is so often sexless and sterile. I want her to be applauded for that, not mocked.

So I hate it every year, even when I don't have a nominee to defend. It mocks writers for even trying to approach the subject of sex, which is sometimes messy and awkward in the real world, too.
posted by libraritarian at 10:14 AM on December 3, 2013 [9 favorites]

Real sex, even really good sex, kind of is awkward and beautiful and icky and perfect all at the same time. I think one should feel at least slightly uncomfortable and weird reading about any realistic description of it, that isn't purely clinical.
posted by empath at 10:18 AM on December 3, 2013 [1 favorite]

Nothing's ever gonna touch the her-eyes-were-bottles-of-wine-covered-in-dew-and-Otters debacle.
posted by WidgetAlley at 10:20 AM on December 3, 2013 [2 favorites]

Really, I've read much worse.
posted by New England Cultist at 10:25 AM on December 3, 2013

I've written much worse.
posted by mazola at 10:55 AM on December 3, 2013 [5 favorites]

"But phew she too seemed to be surfing the waves of neuromuscular euphoria..."
posted by eric1halfb at 10:56 AM on December 3, 2013

" And inside the door of her womb she felt her inner organs and tissues, all her muscles and glands, felt them roll, squeeze, squeeze, and roll, and felt that every inch of her whole being stretched, reached, felt out, felt in, felt all around the shape of his penis. So magnified and so keen were her feelings that her inner nerves could even feel the bumps, the ridges, the pimples, the few stray hairs along the shaft of his male rod. "

OBVIOUSLY NOT WRITTEN BY A WOMAN TYPE PERSON IN POSSESSION OF ACTUAL VAGINA.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 11:13 AM on December 3, 2013 [16 favorites]

In one of the Amber books, Zelazny wrote I think an inspired scene. It's entirety something like: "They relished the gentle indignities." Nice euphemism, I think.
posted by j_curiouser at 11:24 AM on December 3, 2013 [4 favorites]

So magnified and so keen were her feelings that her inner nerves could even feel the bumps, the ridges, the pimples, the few stray hairs along the shaft of his male rod.

And if that were how it worked, no one would ever have sex because that is horrifying. *shudder*
posted by WidgetAlley at 11:46 AM on December 3, 2013

Who's got pimples on his dick anyway?
posted by Mister_A at 12:26 PM on December 3, 2013

I'm sorry if 'dick' is indelicate or artless. Please substitute 'throbbing man-meat' or 'hot, steamin' love cylinder,' as you see fit.
posted by Mister_A at 12:27 PM on December 3, 2013

I've had much worse.
posted by notyou at 12:32 PM on December 3, 2013

Libratarian, I haven't read My Education, but the excerpt in the article didn't seem like bad sex or bad writing to me. I think it made it in because of the vivid and slightly grotesque and weird last sentence, "Had I been a doll, she might have twisted off each of my limbs, and sucked the knobs until they glistened, and drilled her tongue into each of the holes." It sounds weird and unpleasant, but it's meant to, and it evokes a very specific and intense type of sex. It definitely doesn't belong in with the rest.

Real sex, even really good sex, kind of is awkward and beautiful and icky and perfect all at the same time. I think one should feel at least slightly uncomfortable and weird reading about any realistic description of it, that isn't purely clinical.

I agree with you, and yet I think trying to evoke this is why so much literary fiction features truly terrible, unsexy sex scenes. That and trying for a poetic abstraction that just makes everything seem so vague, or so dripping with purple prose, that any sex scene becomes either baffling or ridiculous.

I don't know, the author is dead and all, but I have to wonder how many examples of this kind of godawful sex scene writing are meant to be sexy. I tend to assume they're not meant to be actually sexy, if only to make myself feel better. But I've read a lot of porny fan fiction in my day, and the best of it is almost always better than sex scenes in literary fiction (or sometimes erotica published by professional authors for that matter), and surely published authors could manage a legitimately sexy sex scene if they really tried? Surely there are editors who point out, "wow, that is super not hot and/or not anatomically accurate at all"?
posted by yasaman at 12:33 PM on December 3, 2013 [4 favorites]

...trying for a poetic abstraction that just makes everything seem so vague, or so dripping with purple prose, that any sex scene becomes either baffling or ridiculous

I tend to think any sex scene in literary fiction is fucked before it starts, really; you're trying to describe an experience in which sensation overwhelms consciousness. It's trying to describe great pain; the only way to get to it is to give a little detail and leave a lot of blank space for the reader to fill in...which is just the thing so many literary types can't bear to do. And so it's all melons and starbursts.

Though I have to say, this year's crop were pretty mild, really. Shame John Updike's passed, there was a man who could be relied upon for terrible sex scenes...
posted by Diablevert at 2:00 PM on December 3, 2013

The extract from My Education actually made me want to read the whole book. Definitely didn't belong with the rest.
posted by corvine at 3:00 PM on December 3, 2013 [1 favorite]

I definitely sympathize with the critics here - "what does the good sex writing look like then?" But on the other hand may I offer some advice for prospective writers of sex - perhaps try music?
posted by atoxyl at 3:43 PM on December 3, 2013 [1 favorite]

I get pimples on my dick. I don't think they're transmissible.
posted by atoxyl at 3:43 PM on December 3, 2013

Totally agree on the My Education comments. I thought that passage was very interesting, compelling, and well-written. Its inclusion seems kind mean-spirited and/or prudish.
posted by treepour at 4:35 PM on December 3, 2013 [1 favorite]

It was a dark and stormy night. Suddenly, an orgasm rang out.
posted by bryon at 10:41 PM on December 3, 2013 [5 favorites]

Good lord, Jon Grimwood.
posted by infinitywaltz at 10:59 PM on December 3, 2013

I've had much worse.
posted by notyou at 8:32 PM on December 3

Awwwponysterical
posted by fullerine at 1:27 AM on December 4, 2013

For a palate cleanser, Slate has collected "The 21 Best Lines of 2013" from fiction and non-fiction. Here's a small sampler:

"Frank Tingle has seven uncles and every one but one died with his shoes on, and that one had one shoe on and died trying to pull on the other one."—James Agee, Cotton Tenants

"Sometimes you just have to launch yourself out into the river of an evening."—Questlove, Mo’ Meta Blues

"Barbie lifted Ken’s head, and lowered it—teasingly slow—onto her own neckball."—Nelly Reifler, Elect H. Mouse State Judge

"Hell is other people fucking."—David Gilbert, & Sons

Mocking bad writing is a beneficial form of aesthetic exercise, but it shouldn't come at the expense of seeking out the good.
posted by Doktor Zed at 9:50 AM on December 4, 2013 [2 favorites]

I've read a lot of porny fan fiction in my day, and the best of it is almost always better than sex scenes in literary fiction

Strange but true.
posted by glasseyes at 11:28 AM on December 4, 2013 [1 favorite]

She mounted his throbbing lance of lust, like a hungry beggar falling on a roasted chicken seasoned with garlic and herbs. Grabbing him by his disheveled mullet, she pulled his blushing ears to her pulsating lips and whispered what he longed to hear: "I'm going to favorite you like a comment about bacon."

He immediately stopped refreshing the thread for comments and actually read her article.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 12:10 PM on December 4, 2013 [1 favorite]

These were semi entertaining, but the discussion was so much moreso!

The comments regarding porny fanfiction are pretty spot on. Those of us that have had our own forays were both better and worse than some of the examples.

One thing I've always found frustrating in many attempts at writing sex is the idea of poetic obfuscation. Taking some poetic license with things is well and good but I feel like it should enrich the experience or even make it -more- erotic (or less so if that's what you're trying to communicate the character going through...). My favorite example of taking poetic style and metaphor to town doesn't exactly leave much to the imagination.

Of course in the end, everyone's mileage is going to vary due to the varied sexuality of people. As someone who grew up very sexually repressed I can say one of those passages was just fine by me...
posted by ThrowbackDave at 3:57 AM on December 7, 2013