Nothing much to do with secularity or rightness, but heck, it’s Christmas, let’s have some light relief.
My December/January issue of Literary Review arrived from London today, containing the finalists for the magazine’s annual Bad Sex in Fiction Award. In a spirit of journalistic due diligence, I have been perusing the entries. I don’t think any of the extracts can be shown in full on a family website, but here are some random sentences, just to give the flavor.
Paulo Coelho’s Brida (about “a young Irish woman on a voyage of discovery”): “What she was feeling … was the bringing together once more of herself and the meaning of life; it was a return to the Garden of Eden; it was the moment when Eve was reabsorbed into Adam’s body and the two halves became Creation.” [Whatever happened to “Brace yerself, Bridget!”? — J.D.]
James Buchan’s The Gate of Air (in which the hero does the deed with a ghost): “His arms and legs were as lifeless as fallen branches … Light billowed out of her, and warmth in damp gusts as if from a garden after a rainstorm.”
Rachel Johnson’s Shire Hell (Shire? Nothing to do with me, I swear. Some other shire): “I find myself gripping his ears and tugging at the locks curling over them, beside myself, and a strange animal noise escapes from me as the mounting, Wagnerian crescendo overtakes me.”
Isabel Fonseca’s Attachment: “He placed her carefully like a large terra-cotta urn and skilfully set about his work, as concentrated as a specialist restorer focused on her intricate finish …”
Simon Montefiore’s Sashenka: “When it was over, they had become creatures of the sea, their bodies as sleek and wet as leaping dolphins …”
Kathy Lette’s To Love, Honour and Betray: “… was so big I mistook it for some sort of monument in the centre of a town. I almost started directing traffic around it …”
John Updike’s The Widows of Eastwick: “God, she was antique, but here they were.” [Hey John: You’re no spring chicken yourself, pal. — J.D.]
So there you have it: Genesis, horticulture, Götterdämmerung, pottery restoration, marine biology, traffic management, and antiques. Are there any metaphors left?
[I see from Wikipedia that while Literary Review was winging its way to me, Rachel Johnson was declared the winner. John Updike got a lifetime achievement award. Ah, literary glory!]
I like the monument metaphor. It shows some humor, and what is sex if not funny?
^^ Kathy Lette’s got this one.
Sex is the origin of the phrase “Oh God!” so I think it has a place here 🙂
I generally avoid such figures in my own writing. One generation might view them as sublime; the next, hideous.
Rationalists should be as skeptical of the Literature business, as they are about theology (or politics). Besides, who needs the latest potboiler when there’s powerful fact-based writing such as this, from a SR reg Ms. MacDonald:
http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/miarticle.htm?id=3038
Das stimmt. As Miss MacDonald notes, the UC system has implemented a quota-based, socialist edu-cracy which has little to do with real (ie measurable) merit and intellectual skills, but with a bogus PC “egalitarianism”. The continual lowering of standards at UCs (at least for non-caucasians) insults the minorities who do work hard and succeed academically.
Donna, this reminded me of the following, and in the spirit of the thread, I couldn’t resist. It is supposedly an actual question given on a University of Washington chemistry mid-term. The answer by one student was so “profound” that the professor shared it with colleagues.