[lbo-talk] Mailer's prizewinning writing

[Michael Pollak]

On Tue, 27 Nov 2007, gawker was quoted quoting the LRB giving Mailer the 
Bad Sex writing award:


> <http://gawker.com/news/the-naked-and-the-dead/norman-mailer-even-in-death-an-award+winning-perv-327128.php>


> From the winning passage:
>
> <quote>


> So Klara turned head to foot, and put her most unmentionable part
> down on his hard-breathing nose and mouth, and took his old battering
> ram into her lips. Uncle was now as soft as a coil of excrement. She
> sucked on him nonetheless with an avidity that could come only from
> the Evil One - that she knew....So now they both had their heads at
> the wrong end, and the Evil One was there. He had never been so close
> before.
>
> The Hound began to come to life. Right in her mouth. It surprised
> her. Alois had been so limp. But now he was a man again!


> </quote>

Now that is a prize that is deserved.  Boy is that stunningly awful.

The categories of thought behind that remind me of something Mailer wrote 
in the Armies of the Night, where he said he just couldn't understand the 
way younger genertion this younger generation enjoyed sex without guilt. 
He said as far as he was concerned, "sex without guilt was like an evening 
in the gymnasium."

Michael