"This was not soft porn. This was no longer two unclothed women caressing and kissing on a bed. There was something primitive about it now, this woman-on-woman violence, as though in the room filled with shadows, Pegeen were a magical composite of shaman, acrobat, and animal. It was as if she were wearing a mask on her genitals, a weird totem mask, that made her into what she was not and was not supposed to be. There was something dangerous about it. His heart thumped with excitement – the god Pan looking on from a distance with his spying, lascivious gaze." Philip Roth's The Humbling makes the shortlist for the Literary Review's annual Bad Sex award. A green dildo is also involved.
"Pegeen" is a girl?
Ignore me. Just one of those ugly Irish names.
Her full name is Pegeen Prejean – a dildo loving beauty queen. Phillip Roth rips his stories straight from the headlines.
Simon Called Peter, But Peter Hung Up
I prefer the scene in Poor Toy's Complaint:
Within the deep hot sweetness thus established and well on its way to the ultimate convulsion, I felt I could slow down in order to prolong the glow. Lolita had been safely solipsized. The implied sun pulsated in the supplied poplars; we were fantastically and divinely alone; I watched her, rosy, gold-dusted, beyond the veil of my controlled delight, unaware of it, alien to it, and the sun was on her lips, and her lips were apparently still forming the words of the Carmen-barmen ditty that no longer reached my consciousness. Everything was now ready. The nerves of pleasure had been laid bare. The corpuscles of Krause were entering the phase of frenzy. The least pressure would suffice to set all paradise loose. I had ceased to be Humbert the Hound, the sad-eyed degenerate cur clasping the boot that would presently kick him away. I was above the tribulations of ridicule, beyond the possibilities of retribution. In my self-made seraglio, I was a radiant and robust Turk, deliberately, in the full consciousness of his freedom, postponing the movement of actually enjoying the youngest and frailest of his slaves. Suspended on the brink of that voluptuous abyss (a nicety of physiological equipoise comparable to certain techniques in the arts) I kept repeating chance words after her–barmen, alarmin', my charmin', my carmen, ahmen, ahahamen–as one talking and laughing in his sleep while my happy hand crept up her sunny leg as far as the shadow of decency allowed.
Shaman, Acrobat, and Animal, Attorneys at Law.
Apparently Phillip Roth has not seen Cirque du Soleil, else he would not have chosen this particular series of adjectives.
Much like the Rolling Stones, Philip Roth would have done well to have died in a fiery plane crash while he was still young.
I think these bad sex awards are heteronormative shaming parties that have nothing to do with literary merit. Fuck them.
I care not for sex awards that do not feature Levi Johnston.
I would've thought you were more about 11-inch silver dildo. MY MISTAKE.
Has anyone found a sample of passages from the shortlist yet? The LR website seems to be a bit outdated.
This prose seriously stanks up the room, Overwhelming Vetivert Cologne Edition. Hopefully Mr. Roth found the award The Humbling.