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Morrissey,
one-time lead singer of The Smiths, was picked for the dubious
distinction of winning the tongue-in-cheek Bad Sex in Fiction
Award by Britain's Literary Review magazine for his Penguin
Classic book about four Boston relay runners who are cursed by
an old man.
"The judges were swayed by an ecstatic scene involving Ezra, one
of the athletes, and his plucky girlfriend, Eliza," the judges
said, citing a description of the two "screaming and shouting as
they playfully bit and pulled at each other in a dangerous and
clamorous rollercoaster coil of sexually violent rotation ..."
The review, which announced the prize at a ceremony in London,
said the singer, whose full name is Steven Patrick Morrissey,
"was unable to attend due to touring commitments and was
unavailable for comment".
Morrissey, who is a leader in the indie pop movement, was chosen
from a seven-book shortlist that included Erica Jong's "Fear of
Dying" and "The Wire" screenwriter George Pelecanos's "The
Martini Shot".
The prize, whose stated purpose is “to draw attention to poorly
written, perfunctory or redundant passages of sexual description
in modern fiction, and to discourage them”, was established in
1993. In the past it has gone to such literary lions as Ben
Okri, Norman Mailer and Tom Wolfe.
The late American novelist John Updike is the only person to
date to have won a Lifetime Achievement Award for passages of
bad sex writing.
(Reporting by Michael Roddy; Editing by Ruth Pitchford)
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