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The Bad Sex in Fiction Award: Mailer's Last Hurrah

by Zoe Strimpel
Wed, 28 Nov 2007 at 12:11 PM
updated Wed, 28 Nov 2007 at 12:25 PM

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Norman Mailer last night won the Literary Review's Bad Sex in Fiction Award with a passage from "The Castle in the Forest," a novel about Hitler from the point of view of a mysterious SS officer. Here is the winning extract, a sex scene between Hitler and his mistress.

"So Klara turned head to foot, and put her most unmentionable part down on his hard-breathing nose and mouth, and took his old battering ram into her lips. Uncle was now as soft as a coil of excrement. She sucked on him nonetheless ... The Hound began to come to life. Right in her mouth. It surprised her. Alois had been so limp. But now he was a man again! His mouth lathered with her sap, he turned around and embraced her face with all the passion of his own lips and face, ready at last to grind into her with the Hound, drive it into her piety."

It's hardly a prize one would expect the crème de la crème of the British literary world to swoon over, but the Bad Sex in Fiction Award has — for obvious reasons — developed an unrivaled cult following in London. True to form, everyone from the celebrity restaurant critic Giles Coren (a former winner), to the novelist and author Linda Grant, to the Turner Prize-winning cross-dressing potter Grayson Perry was at the In and Out (Naval and Military) Club in St. James's Square . The rest of the 400-odd guests were literary agents, publishing types, culture writers, and socialites, certainly not above a chance to see the once-famous supermodel Marie Helvin present the winning prize.

The decision to give the winning prize to a dead man was a little strange, but the organizers find the only people it is difficult to track down on the night are famous authors themselves. So, for fear of a no-show from high-profile nominees such as Jeanette Winterson (for "The Stone Gods") and Ali Smith (for "Girl Meets Boy"), the Literary Review did a smart thing, and provided the room a chance to raise a glass to Mr. Mailer. The statuette itself went to the youngest nominee, Richard Milward, 23, for the sake of artistic justice (Mr. Milward was nominated for "Apples," a book about two teenage characters called Adam and Eve that he wrote when he was 19).

The highpoint of the evening — apart from the gallons of champagne sloshed into every glass — was hearing two actresses read out the passages with stupendous vigor and in a variety of accents. Mailer's passage was done with a heavy German twang, while Ms. Winterson's chimed out in a breathy, overdone Home Counties lilt. Blushes all round.

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