Bad Sex In Fiction Award: David Guterson Wins for Oedipal Shower Sex in ‘Ed King’
Every year Britain’s Literary Review hands out the Bad Sex in Fiction Award to the author who has penned the most cringe-worthy sex scene of the year. David Guterson, the author of Ed King, was given the Bad Sex in Fiction Award this year for a lengthy shower scene in his novel involving the main character and his mother.
Guterson’s novel, Ed King, is a re-telling of the Oedipus myth. Guterson said that he was honored to receive the award since Oedipus practically invented the bad sex in fiction award.
Guterson told the Literary Review:
“Oedipus practically invented bad sex, so I’m not in the least bit surprised.”
So what was so terrible about the bad sex passage in Getterson’s novel.
Here’s an excerpt:
“In the shower, Ed stood with his hands at the back of his head, like someone just arrested, while she abused him with a bar of soap… Diane, wielding her fingernails now and staring at his face, helped him out with two practiced hands, one squeezing the family jewels, the other vigorous with the soap-and-warm-water treatment. It didn’t take long for the beautiful and perfect Ed King to ejaculate for the fifth time in twelve hours, while looking like Roman public-bath statuary. Then they rinsed, dried, dressed, and went to an expensive restaurant for lunch.”
Ed King had stiff competition this year. Here are some of the worst bad sex sentences written this year.
- Haruki Murakami wrote in 1Q84 – “A freshly made ear and a freshly made vagina look very much alike, Tengo thought.”
- Chris Adrian wrote in The Great Night – “An impossibly stiff, impossibly eloquent cock” that “poked her now from the front and now from the back and now from the side”
- Lee Child wrote in The Affair – “Then it was time. We started tenderly. Long and slow, long and slow. Deep and easy. She flushed and gasped. So did I. Long and slow.”
But Salon reports that the 2011 candidates still may not be able to match the king of cringe worthy sentences. Rowan Somerville wrote in 2010 – “Like a lepidopterist mounting a tough-skinned insect with a too blunt pin he screwed himself into her.”
Do you think David Guterson’s Oedipal shower sex scene is worthy of the bad sex in fiction award?
