David Guterson gets fiction bad sex award
Japanese literary giant Haruki Murakami and American horror master Stephen King had a narrow escape as they were beaten by American writer David Guterson, who was named as the winner of the Literary Review magazine’s Bad Sex in Fiction award on Monday night.
Described as Britain’s most dreaded literary prize, the annual Bad Sex in Fiction award was set up by British writer and journalist Auberon Wau-gh, son of novelist Evelyn Waugh, during his stint as the editor of Literary Review in 1993. His aim was to gently dissuade “authors and publishers from including unconvincing, perfunctory, embarrassing or redundant passages of a sexual nature in otherwise sound literary novels.”
American David Guterson, who is famous world-wide for his debut novel Snow Falling on Cedars, was given the prize for his latest novel Ed King, a reimagining of the Oedipus myth in the second half of the 20th century. “Oedipus practically invented bad sex, so I’m not in the least bit surprised,” Guterson, who did not attend the award ceremony, said in response to winning the prize. Guterson beat some heavyweight competition to win the award for the scene in the novel “where a mother has sex with her son.” The judges were swayed in Guterson’s favour for using phrases like “front parlor,” “back door,” “family jewels,” and “modest marble membrum.”
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