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Don't think Stephen King is scary? Read his sex scenes...
By Marty BeckermanNovember 22nd, 2011, 8:00 pmComments (13)
Stephen King's new novel 11.22.63 isn't just about a time traveler who tries to stop the JFK assassination; it's also about a time traveler who has badly written sex, according to the Literary Review, which nominated King for its annual Bad Sex in Fiction Award.
Essentially the Golden Raspberry for authors, the Bad Sex in Fiction Award is designed "to draw attention to the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel and to discourage it." King joins nominees from the past nineteen years such as Philip Roth, Nick Cave, and Jonathan Franzen, so at least he's in good company. (And if his ego is bruised, he can always go swimming in his vault of gold coins.)
Here is one of King's offending scenes:
“Ohmygodyes,” she said and I laughed. She opened her eyes and looked up at me with curiosity and hopefulness. “Is it over, or is there more?"
“A little more," I said. "I don't know how much. I haven't been with a woman in a long time.”
It turned out there was quite a bit more. … At the end she began to gasp. “Oh dear, oh my dear, oh my dear dear God, oh sugar!”
And this less-than-erotic gem:
“Her head bonked on the door. ‘Ouch,’ I said. ‘Are you all right?’”
Other nominees this year include Haruki Murakami and James Frey, who was originally nominated for the Bad Sex in Non-fiction Award until he admitted to making it all up. (Hiyo!)
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Commentarium (13 Comments)
Stephen King's sex scenes have always been bad and far creepier than his horror scenes. Check out his deeply unsettling and rapey gangbang scene in "It". I loved the movie as a kid, but the book pretty much ruined my childhood.
How can I find out which Murakami bit was nominated?
Every sex scene in 1Q84 was ripe for it. The one line I remember is the dude remembering his old lover: "Her deep sighs, her wet vagina." I actually bookmarked the page so I could show it to my friends and laugh at it.
It was quoted in that AVC article down there! Fuck yeah, me and the AVC are on the same wavelength.
Ouch, I said.
If you want King to really scare you, listen to some of his radio shows. Vomit inducingly bad.
Hobbes:
http://www.avclub.com/articles/haruki-murakami-1q84,64876/
http://www.thegreatmonkeysuit.com/
As Susie Bright pointed out, and I agree, why are there only awards for bad sex writing? There are lots of awards for good writing in lots of different styles or genres, but sex (or, more largely, eroticism) seems to only get an award when it is bad.
Is this just our cultural squeamishness toward sex? Will no one with intellectual pretensions admit to actually getting turned on by a sexy passage? Are we supposed to be so "above" any "purple prose" that we only notice it when we chastise it?
That is not to say that King's sex scenes are any good, mind you...
Tom Robbins writes some pretty great sex scenes.
I just finished, "11-22-63", yesterday. It was okay, and as usual, I found the characters likeable.
The sex scenes were just stupid. I wonder if his wife criticized them as he has said she did the gang-bang scene in, "It". That scene infuriated me and it was a supposedly consensual act! The rape scene in, "Under The Dome", while violent, was believable and necessary for the story.
So Hot Babes
His sex scenes are a study in stupidity, always have been. He's an excellent story teller but a piss-poor writer.
Now you say something