BAD SEX...?

Author Tom Wolfe (THE BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES) recently won a literary award---although not the kind he probably hoped to receive.

You see, this prize was for bad sex in a novel. It's organized by the London-based Literary Review and bestowed each year in Britain "to draw attention to the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel."

I haven't read Wolfe's I AM CHARLOTTE SIMMONS, for which he won the dubious award. So I don't know whether the sexual passages it contains are actually as "ghastly and boring" as the prize's judges declared---although I doubt it, unless they were written so intentionally, for effect, since Wolfe's normally a fine author.

But reading about the award did make me wonder: Do medical associations give annual prizes for the worst practice of medicine? Do bar associations give annual prizes for the worst practice of law? How about butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers? Electricians, plumbers, and carpenters? Receptionists, secretaries, and administrative assistants?

I could go on---but by now, you probably get the point. Creative artists, including writers, are often lampooned in ways unequaled in any other profession except for politics. This is, in fact, one of the disadvantages of being a creative artist of any kind.

The winner of the bad-sex award receives an Oscar-style statuette and a bottle of champagne, providing he or she actually appears in person to get them. Wolfe declined his own invitation---the first writer in the 12-year history of the prize to do so. Good for him. I'm curious about why his predecessors all showed up---although I suppose a trip to London that could be written off on one's taxes might not be all bad. *g*

Wolfe faced strong competition from ten other authors for the award. I wonder if they're all glad he won...?

There are some races, it would seem, where it pays to be only an also-ran.