On the Bad Sex Awards: why they make me uncomfortable
But…my tongue will not remain bitten. I have to say, at the risk of being a killjoy, that the whole concept–or rather, the execution–of the awards seems to me insidious. As this article by former “winner” Rowan Somerville brilliantly points out, the passages are taken out of all narrative context, and read as if the only possible goal of a sex scene is to titillate, which–spoiler alert!–is radically untrue. What’s more, the judges, in many cases, have not read the entire books, only the nominated passages. As such they have no idea about the author’s goals in writing the scene as he or she has done.To divorce sex writing from its larger purpose within a narrative, and then snicker at the choices the author made in writing it, strikes me as essentially prudish and sexuality-shaming, not to mention grossly un-subtle in its understanding of, you know, HOW STORIES WORK.
For example, maybe an author is using ridiculous euphemisms for genitalia because their POV character can’t bear to think of them any other way. Maybe they’re writing a picaresque novel or a fabliau, in which the treatment of sex is supposed to be raunchy and slapstick-comedic (not having read any of the books referenced on this year’s list, I am guessing this last is the case with the Mason novel). Maybe they’re writing well about bad sex, rather than writing badly about good sex. Maybe they’re writing well about complicated sex, elements of which are gross or funny or traumatic. Somerville writes:
I know that [the audience members] are going to enjoy themselves when it comes to my novel. It is essentially about sexual abuse. The way the protagonists have sex is meant to be an expression of childhood experiences about which neither is consciously aware. The sex is deliberately wrong, cringeworthy, full of expressions of disassociation, of blocked passion and misunderstood urges.
When the young man finally has sex it is “like a lepidopterist mounting a tough-skinned insect with a too blunt pin”. This is meant to be an inappropriate and gruesome image. When the actress reads out the passage in a mawkish moan, the crowd erupts.
Wow, that awards atmosphere really sounds like a sophisticated discussion of literary themes, and not at all like bullying on a playground.
Somerville also points out that:
The magazine editor [and award founder] has been quoted as saying that sex in books “just doesn’t work, I don’t think there are any cases where it works”. So one wonders if this award is anything more than a sort of moral outrage dressed up as a quest for high standards in writing.
Even as I struggle to tell myself it’s “just a bit of fun” and that I’m overreacting, this is VERY MUCH how the award strikes me: prudishness dressed up as fun-poking. And I disagree most vehemently with the editor of the Literary Review. I think sex in books CAN work, and well. I feel there should be more of it: that it should be ever more nuanced, more diverse, more eloquent, more experimental. Not less.
I don’t think we should be aiming for sex writing that can be divorced from its narrative context, in which every sentence or every paragraph is understandable on its own. If that were the goal, why write novels in the first place? Why not just write epigrams? Yes, sex writing out of context can seem wooden or silly or ridiculous or creepy. Guess what? SEX IN THE REAL WORLD can also seem wooden and silly and ridiculous and creepy. Should this not be reflected in our art?
Essentially, this event punishes literary writers for addressing sexuality in their books in any kind of surprising or unusual way. (Note that JK Rowling and EL James are not on this year’s list: the LR’s rationale is that James is insufficiently “literary” and that Rowling’s sex is more generic than bad–implying a calculus where the judges would rather be bored by the same old thing in erotic writing, rather than be, horror of horrors, taken by surprise.)
What a shock, then, to find that mainstream writers and publishers of “literary fiction” are more and more reluctant to include sex in their books: this is what they have to look forward to, if they try to push the boundaries of established sex-writing and think outside the box.
