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This story is not for under-18, but it’s technically safe for work because it’s just a bunch of words that conjure up an image of a very inept, spacey lover. Literary Review magazine has named writer Jonathan Littell the winner of the 2009 “Bad Sex in Fiction” award. The Kindly Ones, a book that was originally published in French and was translated into English, was honored for one particularly very bad sexual scene, below. I’m unfamiliar with this book, but it takes place in Germany during the Nazi regime and apparently contains a lot of homosexual and incestuous themes. This is from what I gathered through the Amazon reviews. I won’t give away the major plot points – not because you might read this book, but because the passage below is bad enough without knowing the context and I’ll leave it at that. The Kindly Ones has won literary awards and has sold over a million copies. Even bad sex sells:
A cringe-inducing passage which compares a sexual encounter to battle with an one-eyed mythological monster was awarded Britain’s Bad Sex in Fiction Prize on Monday.
The editors of the Literary Review magazine said best-selling American author Jonathan Littell won the prize for describing a sex act as “a jolt that emptied my head like a spoon scraping the inside of a soft-boiled egg.”
The offending passage compared female genitalia to various Greek fiends, including the mythical monster Gorgon and “a motionless Cyclops whose single eye never blinks.”
Littell beat other shortlisted authors including Paul Theroux and John Banville to the prize, which celebrates crude or ridiculous descriptions of sex in modern literature.
Littell’s book, The Kindly Ones, is a 900-page epic narrated by a fictional Nazi officer. Originally published in French, the international best-seller won France’s top literary honor, the Goncourt Prize, in 2006.
[From USA Today]
Here’s the passage:
Her vulva was opposite my face. The small lips protruded slightly from the pale, domed flesh. This sex was watching at me, spying on me, like a Gorgon’s head, like a motionless Cyclops whose single eye never blinks. Little by little this silent gaze penetrated me to the marrow. My breath sped up and I stretched out my hand to hide it: I no longer saw it, but it still saw me and stripped me bare (whereas I was already naked). If only I could still get hard, I thought, I could use my prick like a stake hardened in the fire, and blind this Polyphemus who made me Nobody. But my cock remained inert, I seemed turned to stone. I stretched out my arm and buried my middle finger into this boundless eye. The hips moved slightly, but that was all. Far from piercing it, I had on the contrary opened it wide, freeing the gaze of the eye still hiding behind it. Then I had an idea: I took out my finger and, dragging myself forward on my forearms, I pushed my forehead against this vulva, pressing my scar against the hole. Now I was the one looking inside, searching the depths of this body with my radiant third eye, as her own single eye irradiated me and we blinded each other mutually: without moving, I came in an immense splash of white light, as she cried out: ‘What are you doing, what are you doing?’ and I laughed out loud, sperm still gushing in huge spurts from my penis, jubilant, I bit deep into her vulva to swallow it whole, and my eyes finally opened, cleared, and saw everything.
[From Literary Review via The Huffington Post]
So the guy prematurely ejaculated after he started having some sort of whimsical spiritual fantasy, utterly failing to service his partner. That’s bad sex as well as poor writing. Plus, one moment he can’t get it up and the next moment he’s having the big o without any transition. That’s not the worst sex scene I’ve read today, though. All the nominated passages are available on the Literary Review website, but be warned that some are even worse than this one and may haunt you. Littell had some stiff, limp and plastic competition – most notably from a “Mr. Condom” in Richard Milwad’s Ten Storey Love Song. My favorite line is this one: “Mr Condom screams and screams and vomits ice cream into Georgie’s vagina.” That means the condom failed, and the lines that lead up to that one are just as bad. Some of the scenarios are mind boggling, as in “how do people come up with this stuff?”
Obviously these photos are sort-of random
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23 Responses to “The passage that won the bad sex in fiction award (not for under-18)”
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So am I to assume he has dated both Shauna Sands and Pamela Anderson? The guy is CREEPY looking. I could only get to the one eyed cyclops before my eyes crossed and vomit started to come up!
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Couldn’t those brown spots on Pam’s shoulder be lasered off or something? She has spent money on so many other procedures it seems she would have it done. Probably too late to worry about it now.
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CB had me at the “guess the passage” part (yes I know that’s gross, but it’s a bad sex post ffs!).
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That is…I don’t know if revolting is the word I want to use or maybe this is just the case of the author loving to hear his keyboard click as he tries to be avante garde. I don’t know that I’ve ever heard semi-oral sex achieved through pressing your head up against a ladies bits and going all Popeye on her vagina.
Whatever, it was gross. And now I have to go check out the other ones, because I can’t imagine there are others that are worse. Vomiting ice cream? Eeew.
Edit – oh man, those were awful. The last paragraph in the “Death of Bunny” – necrophilia or near-necrophilia? And these people actually found publishers, that’s astonishing.
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Just EW!!!!!
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LMAO-At snowball!
“Going all popeye on her”
Never thought I would hear something like that.
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I am still trying to figure out how this story is related to the alien woman…
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every time I see a picture of Shauna or Pam, I just stop and say a little (actually HUGE) prayer for their kids. I CAN NOT imagine having either one as a parent.
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Lol @ snowball and at this terrible passage from the book. Didn’t think I could actually laugh this early in the morning, and with this little caffine in my body. Thanks CB!
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Is that Dennis Quaid with Pam?
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WTF???
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These are celebrities who have had bad sex tapes. Yes the connection is tenuous, but I needed some pics for this story!
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What, CB?! No Screech? Or creepy Colin “you’re so effin beautiful” Farrell?
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Things probably got a bit messed up in translation.
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Honestly, I didn’t read the entire paragraph. Not because I’m a prude or a Christian or Islamic fundamentalist. It’s just horrible sex however it’s certainly more accurate than the usual overinflated (no pun intended) erotica that is out there and I think that’s why I find it difficult to read. It’s terrible enough experiencing some lackluster sex moments and everyone does, but reading about them certainly takes the frigging cake, lol.
LMAO@ alien woman reference from fizXgirl314. How true.
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Oh no please no one under 18 read this! If I were under 18 and actually had not had sex yet (eyeroll) this would seriously discourage me from ever doing it.
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Wow.
That’s one of the worst things I’ve ever read.
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No one over the age of… well, ANY age should read it. *PUKE*
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Great, thanks a lot CB! Now I’ll be haunted by forehead sex and vagina cyclopses all day. Ewwww….
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HAHAHAHA did Garth Marenghi write that?!
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lol @GatsbyGal. Pretty much the only way this could be excused would be if he was trying to copy Garth.
Oh, I loved the Mr Condom one. But if there’s Mr Penis and Mrs Vagina, does that mean they’re having an affair? Oh, the dangers of personification.
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Just gross!
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lol, this sounds like a very imaginative version of a college experience my friend had. a guy passed out in her lap whilst perfoming cunnilingus and then peed on himself b/c he was so drunk.
maybe that’s where he got the idea..?
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