The earthy taste surprised her. When he was alive, when it swelled inside Miyuki’s mouth, Katsuro’s penis had tasted of raw fish, of warm young bamboo shoots, and of fresh almonds when she finally released its juices. Now it was insipid and muddy to her tongue, like the pools of the temples of Heian Kyō when the Office of Gardens and Ponds had them drained for cleaning.Advertisement
I really, really hope "Advertisement" is in the actual book text.
― I don't get wet because I am tall and thin and I am afraid of people (Eliza D.), Thursday, 28 November 2019 18:04 (four years ago) link
That's funny, Julian Gough's extract last time was some atrociously dismal writing that I identified as one of the worst two. Don't publish your writing if you don't want it pulled apart and mocked. I suppose he excuses himself by saying it was meant to be dismal or something
― imago, Thursday, 28 November 2019 18:08 (four years ago) link
lmfao what a hysterically self-serving pointless tantrum
― imago, Thursday, 28 November 2019 18:11 (four years ago) link
you got dragged on the internet and consequently had the gall to equate Your Struggle with global free speech issues, what a colossal prick!
― imago, Thursday, 28 November 2019 18:13 (four years ago) link
ends with 'buy my book' of course it does haha
This is quite a crop. The Gilbert passage is just straight-up bad writing. Unless she's fifteen, in which case: good job!
― War Crimes Tribunal of the Network Stars (Old Lunch), Thursday, 28 November 2019 18:22 (four years ago) link
A reference to le petit mort, I gather, deployed terribly. xp
― Le Bateau Ivre
to clarify, i wasn't asking what harvey was trying to say with that, it was more "how on earth does one write prose that bad" - "death-life" by itself is perhaps merely a hacky gloss on someone with some vague notion of "French" notions of sexuality, but then to end the sentence with "growingly" - i initially read it as 'growlingly' but no actually "growlingly" would improve the sentence, i think. The overall effect is more laughably crude than more workaday euphemisms like "erect member" - was he attempting to write a Tom Swiftie?
similarly, there is the phrase "luxurious desultory twining". it is _work_ to write this poorly. harvey has either a decent vocabulary or the resources to fake it, and an understanding that words can be modified from their usual part of speech for effect, but chooses combinations of words words that, while they may be individually merely inoffensive and banal, taken in concert are grotesque in both scansion and meaning.
― Agnes Motörhead (rushomancy), Thursday, 28 November 2019 20:02 (four years ago) link
― imago, Thursday, November 28, 2019 6:11 PM
It's a bit overblown but I think enough of it is correct. It's always been a shitty and unfair award.
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Friday, 29 November 2019 17:56 (four years ago) link
"He kisses them. Teases a nipple with his lips. It’s so soft; and then, suddenly, hard.
Wow.
He sucks on the hard nipple.
He has never done this before, and yet; no, wait, of course, it is totally familiar.
The first thing he ever did."
In my head this was an Owen Wilson "wow."
― Greta Van Show Feets BB (milo z), Friday, 29 November 2019 18:14 (four years ago) link
"And then it was the most, and I more or less died." is the funniest punchline, and the excerpt is probably the worst in an amateurish way, but Harvey is really something... else. Gotta go with that
― “Hakuna Matata,” a nihilist philosophy (One Eye Open), Friday, 29 November 2019 18:17 (four years ago) link
The Gough article is pretty dumb imo w/many faulty premises
if even straight white males, often with major publishers behind them, are going to be humiliated for writing about sex, then is anyone going to be able to at all
― “Hakuna Matata,” a nihilist philosophy (One Eye Open), Friday, 29 November 2019 18:19 (four years ago) link
I read the first one, then I stopped reading. If any of the rest are worse than that, I most emphatically do not want them in my head. Alas, this debars me from voting.
― A is for (Aimless), Friday, 29 November 2019 18:22 (four years ago) link
Can someone make a browser plugin that adds a Goughian 'wow' to random ILX posts?
"Alas, this debars me from voting.
Wow."
― “Hakuna Matata,” a nihilist philosophy (One Eye Open), Friday, 29 November 2019 18:28 (four years ago) link
Decoin one is fine, with a few mildly effective jokes that might be on the character. The Gilbert one is fine, bar a handful of lit-major eyerolls that might be the character’s voice, not the novel’s.
― insecurity bear (sic), Saturday, 30 November 2019 01:08 (four years ago) link
The other three feel more like they’re indicative of bad books but not especially egregious.
― insecurity bear (sic), Saturday, 30 November 2019 01:10 (four years ago) link
I never knew a penis could taste insipid.
― Evans on Hammond (evol j), Saturday, 30 November 2019 01:46 (four years ago) link
Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.
― System, Sunday, 1 December 2019 00:01 (four years ago) link
Decoin one feels like it's probably quite racist in an exoticising way? But I don't know enough about the author or book to know if that's just my own "ick" feeling or grounded in reality.
Gilbert one I do think is okay, it's a character voice - not one I care for particularly, but recognisable as such.
Voted for Harvey, despite feeling like in his case it's not the sex part of the writing that makes it bad. A lot of bad sex writing is more like the Costello one with too much specificity and not enough sense, and certainly no sexiness. But with Harvey, he actually doesn't go into crazy TMI detail about the sex, he just seems like he would write badly about anything.
― emil.y, Sunday, 1 December 2019 18:13 (four years ago) link
Did any of the organizers write sex or say what sex writing they enjoyed?
Just watched a youtube video called Girls Describe Their Favorite Hentai Scenes, shot at a convention with mostly cosplayers being interviewed and it was kind of funny.
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Sunday, 1 December 2019 20:01 (four years ago) link
Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.
― System, Monday, 2 December 2019 00:01 (four years ago) link
Went the same way as the official award
― Tsar Bombadil (James Morrison), Wednesday, 4 December 2019 01:59 (four years ago) link