Bad Sex Awards 2012 shortlist leaves out Fifty Shades

Fifty Shades of Grey (Photo credit: ellebnere)

E. L. James, author of Fifty Shades of Grey, was highly anticipated to be in this year’s most dreaded yet coveted prize have failed to make the shortlist.

The bad sex prize was established “to draw attention to the crude and often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel – and to discourage it”.

The Literary Review‘s senior editor, Jonathan Beckman, who oversees the contest, explains that the Fifty Shades trilogy is not eligible “because the prize’s rubric explicitly excludes pornographic and erotic literature.”

He added: “I don’t think she needs any more publicity, does she?”

The shortlist includes:

Tom Wolf’s Back to Blood

Nicola Barker‘s The Yips

Nicholas Coleridge‘s The Adventuress

Nancy Huston‘s Infrared

Paul Maon’s Rare Earth

Ben Master’s Noughties

Sam Mills‘ The Quiddity of Will Self . This is a noteworthy nomination, since Self’s own fiction has been shortlisted on three occasions.

Craig Raine‘s The Divine Comedy.

The winner will be announced at a lavish ceremony in London next month. Apparently, among the literati,  it is considered a badge of courage for the authors to attend to receive it in person.

Here are some choice excerpts:

The Quiddity of Wilf Self, by Sam Mills: Down, down, on to the eschatological bed. Pages chafed me; my blood wept onto them. My cheek nestled against the scratch of paper. My cock was barely a ghost, but I did not suffer panic.

Rare Earth by Paul Mason: He began thrusting wildly in the general direction of her chrysanthemum, but missing — his paunchy frame shuddering with the efford of remaining rigid and upside down.

 

Related articles

• The Bad Sex in Fiction Award 2012: Shortlist (theparisreview.org)
• ­Fifty Shades dismissed from Bad Sex in Fiction award as ‘pure porn’ (rt.com)
• The ‘Bad Sex Awards’ Snubbed Fifty Shades of Grey This Year (jezebel.com)
• JK Rowling fails to make Bad Sex 2012 shortlist (independent.co.uk)

 

Fifty Shades of Grey is the book most likely to be bought and left behind

Fifty Shades of Grey Toys Picture Source: hypable.com

Mention E.L. James’ Fifty Shades of Grey and most people would either gasp in delight or groan out loud. Or, if they have been ensconced in an ivory tower or desert island far from any broadsheet, radio programme and the water-cooler chatter, you might receive a quizzical look.

Initially appearing on fanfiction.net as a Twilight Fan Fiction Master of the Universe it has since taken on a life in the publishing world when it was published as Fifty Shades of Grey. Love it or loathe it, Fifty Shades of Grey is now regarded as a modern publishing phenomenon and one of the bestselling book in British history. Dubbed “mummy porn”, the erotic book has now sold in excess of 5.3 million copies in ebook and print. The second and third books, Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed, are also selling fast. UK sales are in excess of 3.6m and 3.2m respectively and combined UK sales for the trilogy are over 12m copies, with rights to the book sold around the world and published in languages including Polish, Albanian, Chinese, Russian, Serbian and Vietnamese.

However, critics have not welcomed the book with the same unbridled enthusiasm as E.L. James’ fans. For instance, in his recent article in the London Review of Books, Andre O’Hagen described the “mummy porn” books as a “multi-million-selling contributor to the art of terrible writing about sex”.

He continues: “300-page gala of repetitive sex, most of it – give or take a few smacks on the arse – completely conventional. I suspect the book has taken the world’s mums by storm because there’s no mess on the carpet and there are hot showers afterwards. Everybody is comfortable and everybody is clean: they travel first-class, the rich give presents, the man uses condoms, and everything dark is resolved in a miasma of cuddles.”

Andre O’Hagen added: “It’s not that Fifty Shades of Grey and EL James’s other tie-me-up-tie-me-down spankbusters read as if feminism never happened: they read as if women never even got the vote.”

However, while it may be on the bestselling list, Fifty Shades of Grey is also on another list. It appears that E.L. James’ erotic novel is also the book that Britons are most likely to leave behind in their hotel room.

According to Travelodge, the budget hotel chain, around 7,000 copies of E.L. James’s Fifty Shades of Grey have been recovered from its rooms since its release earlier this year.

Apparently, The Help, by Kathryn Stockett; Stephen Fry’s The Fry Chronicles; and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, by John Le Carre, made the top 20 of books left behind in hotel rooms.

                     Books left behind

1. Fifty Shades of Grey E.L. James
2. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo     Stieg Larsson
3. The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets’ Nest Stieg Larsson
4. Fifty Shades Freed E.L. James
5. The Hunger Games Suzanne Collins
6. The Girl Who Played With Fire Stieg Larsson

7. Fifty Shades Darker E.L. James
8. Catching Fire Suzanne Collins
9. Mockingjay Suzanne Collins
10. The Help Kathryn Stockett
11. One Day David Nicholls
12. A Tiny Bit Marvellous Dawn French
13. Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography Steve Jobs
14. Diary Of A Wimpy Kid Jeff Kinney
15. The Brightest Star In The Sky Marian Keyes
16. The Fry Chronicles Stephen Fry
17. Room Emma Donoghue
18. StrengthsFinder 2.0 Tom Rath
19. The Confession John Grisham
20. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy John Le Carre

Personally, I can’t imagine leaving behind Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy much less The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. However, with Fifty Shades of Grey…

Related articles

• Travelling Southwards, Andrew O’Hagen, London Review of Books.
• Fifty Shades of Grey (crazybest.wordpress.com)
• VIDEO: Fifty Shades author ’embarrassed’ (bbc.co.uk)
• ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ Author E.L. James Teases New Book from Christian’s POV? (booksnreview.com)
• Erotic fiction is now 4,000% more popular than high quality literature (dailymail.co.uk)

Fan Fiction allows writers the freedom to explore

Here comes the bride: fan art of Edward and Bella
Picture source: twitarded

Lately, Fan Fiction is in the spotlight because EL James, author of Fifty Shades of Grey, admitted that she learned her writing chops writing Twilight fan fiction before she converted the names Bella and Edward to Anastasia and Christian Grey. What happened next is a publishing phenomenon which has taken trade publishers and Twilight fans by surprise. Judging from the number of fan fiction authors who have been published recently, for example, Tara Sue Me who is the latest example, publishers appear to believe they have found in fan fiction a new route to increasing their profit margins and are now no doubt scouring the slush piles in sites such as fanfiction.net for the next big thing.

But we should not forget that fan fiction is a craze that’s almost as old as writing itself. Just think The Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, for instance.

One does wonder how those readers who still read books regard fan fiction. Are they sneery about these sites?

However, it is undoubted that  fan fiction – particularly its erotic-heavy along with its slash fiction strands – is a self-publishing phenomenon where amateur and aspiring authors write stories about the characters they are obsessed with. Just looking at the numbers of Twilight fan fics that are and have been published and the plethora of slash fan fiction that are written, for example, in homage of Spock/Captain Picard, it’s a phenomenon. If trade publishing is the tip of the iceberg, then fan fiction must be the vast unexplored world of a self-publishing phenomenon.

Desert Heat – Spock and Kirk by Gayle Feyrer Picture source: guardian.co.uk

It is a dark genre where Eric Northman and Sookie is depicted in bdsm Southern Vampire Fiction fics  and where Spock and Draco are ‘shipped’ in Alternate Universe slash fics.

Despite the successes of EL James and others who are following in her footsteps, a misconception remains that fan fiction is just silly girls’ fantasies scrawled on the underbelly of the internet. I suspect Fifty Shades of Grey has done little to rescue the reputation of the genre.

But here’s the counter-argument: most fan fiction is a rejection of the normative version of sexuality. Fan fiction offers a more honest way, if sometimes radical and wayward platforms to engage with and negotiate relationships, sex and gendered power relations.

Perhaps, another way of viewing fan fiction is that it offers a test bed to cut one’s teeth in writing. It offers anonymity and help aspiring writers to become better writers, and allowing them to explore sexuality in a ways which depart from the norms dictated by the Hollywood industrial complex, light entertainment industry and dominant forms of popular culture.

What do you think of fan fiction? Let me hear your thoughts!

Picture source for Twilight fan art : twitarded 

Picture source for Spock/Picard fan art: guardian.co.uk

Related articles

• The New Wave of Writing? (cultofajracewood.wordpress.com)
• 5 Ways Writing Fan-Fiction Made Me A Better Writer (debravega.wordpress.com)
• How to Stop Writing Fan Fiction and Start Writing Original Fiction by Claire Violet Thorpe (clairevioletthropeexpress.wordpress.com)