Morrissey’s Bulbous Salutation Could Win Bad Sex Award

The nominees have been announced for the 2015 Bad Sex in Fiction Award. The annual award from The Literary Review honors a writer “who has produced an outstandingly bad scene of sexual description in an otherwise good novel. The purpose of the prize is to draw attention to poorly written, perfunctory or redundant passages of sexual description in modern fiction, and to discourage them.” Previous winners include Ben Okri, John Updike, Norman Mailer, and Tom Wolfe.

This year’s nominees include Erica Jong, Richard Bausch, Lauren Groff, and Morrissey, whose debut novel List of the Lost was mercilessly slagged by critics. And no wonder when it includes a passage like the following: “Eliza and Ezra rolled together into one giggling snowball of full-figured copulation …with Eliza’s breasts barrel-rolled across Ezra’s howling mouth and the pained frenzy of his bulbous salutation extenuating his excitement as it whacked and smacked its way into every muscle of Eliza’s body except for the otherwise central zone.” You can read samples from this year’s nominated passages at Literary Review’s Twitter account. The winner will be announced on December 1st.