Stereo sex wins bad award

By Joanna Nathan, CNN.com Europe writer

LONDON, England -- Comparing one's lover to an electrical appliance is not perhaps the best way to ensure sparks fly.

But it was enough to gain writer Sean Thomas the most dreaded of British literary prizes -- the Bad Sex in Fiction award.

Created by The Literary Review eight years ago for the worst, most redundant or embarrassing description of sex, Thomas, a 37-year-old Londoner, took this year's title for a passage from his second novel "Kissing England," exposing the underbelly of the "New Lad" culture

CNN.com Europe More news from our Europe edition     QUOTE "...She would have lain down in the warm mud for him, even the mud of the pigsty, to enter the exaltation she found in his brute love..." Gertrude and Claudius, John Updike

And what an underbelly it is, filled with football, booze -- and of course women.

Thomas' award-winning passage reads: "It is time, time ... Now. Yes. She is so small and compact and yet she has all the necessary features ... Shall I compare thee to a Sony Walkman. She is his own Toshiba, his dinky little JVC, his sweet Aiwa ... Aiwa, aiwa aiwa aiwa aiwa aiwa aiwa aiwa aiwa aiwa aiwaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh."

Other contenders included John Updike for a passage set in a pig sty and Wendy Holden's extravagant reference to a cricket bat in "Bad Heir Day."

But bad sex is getting harder to find, say the event organisers -- who are claiming some of the credit.

Robert Posner, of Literary Review, said the awards were created to mock a tendency to include a sex scene, however redundant, in every book, but he believes the awards now make writers think long and hard about relevance -- and realism -- for fear of nomination.

The editor of the saucier Erotic Review, Rowan Pelling, agrees, fearing the awards are pure "literary prophylactic."

Posner is however keen to point out that the award is largely for fun and authors are generally "delighted" to be short listed, if only for the publicity.

"We are not laughing at them, we are sharing the joke."

Although he adds that Updike's description of longing in a pig pen is "so pretentious, so inept, it makes you think he must never have had sex in his life."

Past winners of the award include TV arts presenter Melvyn Bragg, Nicholas Royle and Philip Kerr.

Last year's "victor," A.A. Gill, even emblazoned his bad sex prowess on his books covers.

Pelling would now like to see the creation of a Good Sex Award to encourage British authors, who she says come from a tradition of "romps" rather than eroticism.

"They tend to make it funny rather than adopting the professional and serious attitude needed for lipid prose such as the French, Russians or even the Germans.

"There is no attempt at delicacy."

So how should one set about writing about good sex?

"It is the most incredibly difficult thing to do," says Pelling. "We are good at satire, the big picture, but good erotic writing require sincerity and self belief."

And most of all, "complete emotional involvement."

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