[2582] in Humor
HUMOR: Eyes on the Prize
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Sharalee M. Field)
Wed Dec 9 09:15:04 1998
Date: Wed, 09 Dec 1998 09:14:02 -0500
To: humor@MIT.EDU, mowu@MIT.EDU, "MEGallagh@aol.com" <MEGallagh@aol.com>,
wheger@wbc-architects.com,
"kris.m.kelly@us.pwcglobal.com" <kris.m.kelly@us.pwcglobal.com>,
jbran18610@aol.com, dunbar@MIT.EDU, dahv@MIT.EDU, mtsai@bqa.com,
immer@MIT.EDU, jack.gingras@ae.ge.com, tlawlor@palmerdodge.com,
nkahn@gph.com, GDeVoe@rimco.com,
"Jean, Marc (GEAE)" <marc.jean@ae.ge.com>, celia_kent@harvard.edu,
Maryellen Fitzgibbon <mfitzgib@fas.harvard.edu>,
cjwells@fas.harvard.edu,
Cheryl Guarino Buccelli <c_buccelli@harvard.edu>,
leite@fas.harvard.edu, Courtney Nichols <crnichol@fas.harvard.edu>
From: "Sharalee M. Field" <sharalee_field@harvard.edu>
>Date: Mon, 07 Dec 1998 23:36:18 -0800
>From: Connie Kleinjans <connie@nanospace.com>
>X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.06 [en] (Win95; U)
>To: connie@nanospace.com
>Subject: HUMOR: Eyes on the Prize
>
>From: Alan Gleason <gleason@well.com>
>
>November 25, 1998
>
>Authors Don't Want Bad Sex Award
>By The Associated Press
>
>LONDON (AP) -- Will the winner be Julian Barnes, author of an
>unfortunate episode featuring a diapered male character, a bowl of ice
>water and a prostitute asking ``Baby do poo?''
>
>Or perhaps writer Alan Titchmarsh, who somehow managed to pack the
>``lissome limbs of this human boa constrictor'' and ``liquid noises''
>into a single paragraph in his book ``Mr. MacGregor''?
>
>One thing is certain: Whoever wins this award does not want it.
>
>The august Literary Review's Bad Sex Prize -- presided over by the son
>of ``Brideshead Revisited'' author Evelyn Waugh, no less -- pays homage
>to the literary carnage that can ensue when bad sex happens to good, and
>not-so-good, writers.
>
>The point of the prize is simple, as set out by the Review and its
>attention to the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant
>passages of sexual description in the modern novel, and to discourage
>it.''
>
>Appropriately, last year's winner, Nicholas Royle for ``The Matter of
>the Heart,'' was presented with ``a semi-abstract statue representing
>incompetent English sex.''
>
>One of the hottest candidates going into Thursday's awards dinner is
>lesser novelist but great English statesman Douglas Hurd, whose sexual
>passages in ``The Shape of Ice'' come off more perfunctory than
>passionate. Kind of a ``Then he ..., then she'' format.
>
>Still, the former Conservative foreign secretary does possess the
>flights of carnal fancy necessary to describe his prime minister hero as
>standing before his secretary -- she who is called Artemis --
>``trembling and naked, a white forked nothing.''
>
>The winners have shown up every year -- albeit with gritted teeth --
>since the prize's inception in 1993.
>
>In 1995, Philip Kerr was booed lustily when he used the occasion of
>winning for ``Gridiron'' to blast the Review and take Britons to task
>for continuing to regard sex as a subject for sniggering.
>
>But 1996 honoree David Huggins, whose ``The Big Kiss'' contained
>indelible phrases like ``Liz squeaked like wet rubber'' and ``she hooked
>a yoga-leg onto my shoulder,'' took the award in the spirit in which it
>was intended.
>
>``This is my first prize,'' he told the glittering assemblage. ``I may
>celebrate by having bad sex.''
>
>As in previous years, 1998's list of unlucky 13 nominees -- which also
>includes Alice Walker, Carlos Fuentes, Mary Gordon and actor Richard E.
>Grant (``She sucks my tongue so hard it is difficult to form a syllable
>...'') -- were culled from nominations from the monthly periodical's
>readers.
>
>It was inevitable, of course, that at least one reader would single out
>Kenneth Starr's report on President Clinton's affair with Monica
>Lewinsky -- a tome in which cigars now rate as foreplay.
>
>``I am not sure it qualifies, until such time as the whole episode is
>officially relegated to the fiction shelf,'' Waugh writes of ``The Starr
>Report'' in the Review's latest issue.
>
>But, he quickly concedes, ``it certainly contains plenty of bad sex.''
>
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