‘Bulo Remembers 2009-Today: “Bad Sex in Fiction”

I am El Somnambulo, and I’m a listaholic. All this month, I’ll bring you a selected survey of those Year-End lists that intrigue my sick mind and that you might enjoy as well.

Most of the lists I use can be found at this site. There aren’t a whole lot of lists there yet, but by the end of the year, there will be hundreds upon hundreds of them. It’s a really cool site for those with beaucoups time on their hands. Feel free to highlight your faves and add them in the comments section.

I will not select lists that require you to click through a countdown. So, sorry Time Magazine, your user-unfriendly stuff is outta here like Vladimir.

Enough for the ground rules. Today I take you to where good writers should fear to tread, and that’s writing about sex. I’m not sure if it’s that they’re not gettin’ any, or if they feel the need to somehow elevate (there are pills for that) flaccid purple prose into tumescence. I do know that, when I was in Third Person Withdrawal Rehab, noted authoress Marilynne Robinson eyed me hungrily, licked her lips in lupine fashion, and daintily downed a 13-ounce serving of Golden’s Cheese Blintzes without once taking a breath.

Anyway, today those cunning linguists from Literary Review proudly present the Best (or is it Worst?) of 2009, their annual Bad Sex in Fiction Awards.

While YMMV, I am especially torn between these three passages as my faves:

Paul Theroux: ‘Baby.’ She took my head in both hands and guided it downward, between her fragrant thighs. ‘Yoni puja – pray, pray at my portal.’

Simon Van Booy: “Sweat pooled in the ridge of my back as I moved like a tide determined to crash against those ancient rocks.”

Richard Milward: “Then, Bobby starts scrabbling frantically across the carpet for Mr Condom, sending five or six multicolour Durexes flying through the air, and he struggles getting the packet open and Georgie has to roll Mr Condom down Mr Penis for him and she has to help insert him into Mrs Vagina.”

Well, there you have it. I just hope that, after today’s fevered literary couplings, future lists don’t prove to be…anti-climactic.