Confirming a prediction from GalleyCat readers, John Updike won a lifetime achievement award at the annual Bad Sex in Fiction Awards. In addition, the editors of the Literary Review awarded the annual Bad Sex prize to novelist Rachel Johnson for Shire Hell.
Johnson was proud of the award: “I’m not feeling remotely grumpy about it. I know that men with literary reputations to polish might find it insulting … but if you’ve had a book published in the year any attention is welcome, even if it’s slightly dubious attention of this sort.”
Heavy-hitting nominees on the shortlist included John Updike, Russell Banks, and Paulo Coelho. Updike won the lifetime achievement award after being nominated four times over the course of his career. Here’s a link to Updike’s shortlisted passage from 2005 Bad Sex nominee, Villages:
“Faye leaned back on the blanket, arranging her legs in an M of receptivity, and he knelt between them like the most abject and craven supplicant who ever exposed his bare a** to the eagle eyes of a bunch of crows.”