steve almond speaks: the thrust of good sex writing

so, the literary review recently announced this year’s winner of the “bad sex in fiction” award (via bookriot). apparently, thanks to the fact that E.L. James  doesn’t qualify (no erotica or bdsm novels allowed), this year’s the award went to Nancy Houston for her novel Infrared. Infrared included such gems as, the “undulating space where the undulating skies make your non-body undulate.” Yeah . . .

Houston had some stiff (ha!) competition this year. personally i think Tom Wolf’s Back to Blood should’ve won for, “Now his big generative jockey was inside her pelvic saddle, riding, riding, riding, and she was eagerly swallowing it swallowing it swallowing it with the saddle’s own lips and maw.” seriously, guy. pelvic saddle ? (incidentally, James Wood has an excellent review of Back to Blood in the new yorker).

it does make me wonder, where’s the good sex in fiction award? for that matter where’s the good sex in fiction? i mean, i read my fair share of romance (no, not 50 Shades) and i refuse to read a romance author who can’t write a good sex scene. after all, it’s romance. sure, not all romance is about sex or even has sex it it. but when i read a romance i expect there to be sex and i expect it to be well-written. i’m rarely disappointed. it’s only when i read literature that i get nervous for the writer if i see a sex scene around the corner. usually it’s not that bad but that’s because most writers cop out as soon as naked body parts begin to touch.

which reminds me of an essay i read a few years ago by Steve Almond called “Hard Up for a Hard On” (found in The Writer’s Notebook: Craft Essays from Tin House). it’s a fantastic essay on all that’s wrong with fictional sex scene writing and how it can be improved. Almond wisely notes that

The central reason that people muff – I said muff – their attempts to write sex is because they are putting pressure on themselves for the scene to be sexy. And any time you feel pressure you start making all the mistakes associated with pressure: the unnecessary similes and metaphors, the needless obfuscation, the genital euphemisms, the fancy words that wind up feeling imposed by the author instead of experienced by the characters.

he goes on to write that the best sex writing isn’t about how good the sex is but the way it reveals something about the characters, which is “what really matters.” Almond provides several compelling examples of good sex writing (see, for example, Spending by Mary Gordon). none of the excerpts are particularly concerned with being sexy. and in so doing, they end up being – you guessed it – sexy.

i won’t provide Almond’s excerpts here because they’re fairly long and i’m frankly too lazy to type them. but i leave you with this final quote from Almond’s essay, which is my favorite:

Real sex is compelling to read about because the participants are so utterly vulnerable. We are all, when the time comes to get naked, terribly excited and frightened and hopeful and doubtful, usually all at the same time. You [author] mustn’t abandon your characters in their time of need. You mustn’t make them naked playthings with rubbery parts. You must love them, wholly and without shame, as they go about their human business. Because we’ve already got a name for sex without emotional content: pornography.

bonus reel: “bad sex in fiction awards 2012: hunting for dirty books” (“you dirty cake”)