Sex in literature: gratuitous add-on or sensual essential? One thing's for sure, some writers just get it wrong. So bad is some sex in fiction, that the Brits have a literary prize for it. Providing a good annual giggle among the UK's literary establishment, the aim of the Literary Review's Bad Sex Award is purportedly: "to draw attention to the crude, badly written, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel, and to discourage it". Discourage it?! We all enjoy other people's hilariously awkward sex way too much to want to do that.
Of course, sex in literature is nothing new, and sex doesn't get much more awkward than in the classics. Cringe-worthy euphemisms rub limbs with bizarre bawdiness, birthing fiction you definitely wouldn't want to lend to your mom. Or child. Or any decent human being. Let's face it, sometimes you just don't need to hear about octopus bestiality. 'Nuff said.
So check out the top eight sex flops in literature, if you can deal with just how awkward they are!
1684: I grant in absence dildo may be used/
With milk of goats, when once our seed's infused./ My p**** no more to bald c*** shall resort—/ Merkins rub off, and often spoil the sport.
1748: "I had it now, I felt it now, and, beginning to drive, he soon gave nature such a powerful summons down to her favourite quarters, that she could no longer refuse repairing thither; all my animal spirits then rushed mechanically to that centre of attraction, and presently, inly warmed, and stirred as I was beyond bearing, I lost all restraint."
1814: "My wish comes true at last, this day of days; finally I have you in my grasp! Your 'bobo' is ripe and full, how wonderful! Superior to all others! To suck and suck and suck some more. After we do it masterfully, I'll guide you to the Dragon Palace of the Sea God and envelop you." [Um, for clarification, that was an octopus performing cunnilingus on a woman...]
1934: "There was something about her eloquence at that moment and the way she thrust that rosebush under my nose which remains unforgettable ... Her words imbued it with a peculiar fragrance; it was no longer just her private organ, but a treasure, a magic, potent treasure."
1949: "My c*** was still firm. It hung obedient on her wet lips, as though receiving the sacrament from a lascivious angel. She came again, like an accordion collapsing in a bag of milk."
1951: "Macmann trying to bundle his sex into his partner's like a pillow into a pillowslip, folding it in two and stuffing it in with his fingers... And though both were completely impotent they finally succeeded, summoning to their aid all the resources of the skin, the mucus and the imagination, in striking from their dry and feeble clips a kind of sombre gratification."
1969: "She pushes Drake's Daredevil Cupcakes (chocolate with a white creamy center) down over my c*** and then eats them off of me, flake by flake. She pours maple syrup out of the Log Cabin can and then licks it from my tender balls until they're clean again as a little boy's."
1975: "He used bread to soak up my first adolescent sauce, he would put things there before eating them, he gave them to me to eat, he put asparagus stalks into me to eat them marinated with the brine of my inner humors, delicious, he told me, you taste like a port."
