The Literary Review announced last week that pop singer Morrissey has won its 2015 Bad Sex in Fiction 'award' thanks to a passage from his debut novel, List of the Lost (2015).
Morrissey joins former winners Norman Mailer and Tom Wolfe -- not to mention famous shortlisted writers from Stephen King to Erica Jong -- in the dubious honor, for "produc[ing] an outstandingly bad scene of sexual description in an otherwise good novel."
Presumably, the award pinpoints passages intended to be taken seriously. But, about when "bad sex" is, in fact, a writer's lifelong obsession? From his earliest days as the lyricist and frontman of The Smiths, Morrissey has consistently written of sexuality with heavy doses of sarcasm, wordplay and dry, dark humor.
Can we rule out levity when it comes to the scene in question?
Read it twice. Three times, if you can. What is actually happening, it seems, is that two enthusiastic and possibly normal looking (full-figured?) participants are attempting to engage in a particular sex act while experiencing, erm, technical difficulty.
Who among us...
Now, imagine Amy Schumer performing the same, on-screen.
'The most inept that ever stepped'
For more than 30 years, Morrissey's bad sex has come crashing forth from listeners' cassette decks and now iPods with an unnerving, yet comforting, realism. As a lyricist -- arguably the voice of a generation of glistening, shirtless young lads and pasty romantic ne-er-do-wells alike, a voice whose enduring appeal inexplicably crisscrosses distinct and seemingly incongruous cultures both with The Smiths and as a solo artist -- Morrissey's bad sex has remained reliably funny in its acute empathy.
Morrissey telepathically knows how badly it went on your date with with so-and-so. But, hey, take a cue from ol' Moz: It's better to laugh than to cry. Haplessness can be funny. Especially one's own, expressed delicately.
Think of the self-deprecation of "These Things Take Time" from The Smiths' eponymous debut (1984), which unforgettably bemoans that "the hills are alive with celibate cries." Or, "I Started Something I Couldn't Finish" from their final album, Strangeways (1987), littered with frustrated grunts and groans, as the speaker details a confusing "friendly venture" in a parked car on a deserted roadway: "I grabbed you by the gilded beams / that's what tradition means / and I doused another venture / with a gesture / that was absolutely vile."
Eschewing candy coated lust of the flesh and doe-eyed romantic flourish, Morrissey's throes of passion come stained with bitter regret. Fault oscillates between vicious or duplicitous lovers and his speakers' own impotence, both figurative and literal. Even when it's good, it's bad: Think "Handsome Devil" or "Reel Around the Fountain," each driven by insatiable sadomasochistic longing, or "Miserable Lie," wherein a lover's "wind-swept mystical air" means not love, but "I'd like to see your underwear." Some entries, of course, among the singer's vast catalog contain less flippant attitudes toward sex, but those attitudes aren't without complication. The more recent solo effort "Dear God, Please Help Me" from Ringleader of the Tormentors (2006), chronicles -- with a great deal of earnestness -- a speaker's tense ambivalence toward "doing the right thing" while embarking on a sexual relationship in Rome listeners may presume would not receive the Pope's approval.
Lazy critics -- both professional and lay -- write off Morrissey's outlandish miserablism as histrionics sans substance. Fans contend that overlooks entirely the dry, quiet, subtle ways the writer plays with words and sounds. It's hard to imagine that "Girlfriend in a Coma" is "really serious." Or that "You Have Killed Me" is about anything other than ... well, feel free to your own interpretation. Outside of lyricism, Morrissey's widely recorded views -- or at least those of the character he plays publicly: A sometime celibate, sometime hypersexual "humasexual" -- offer similarly amusing gems.
Typical Moz, typical Moz, typical Moz.
Crashing bores
Whether List of the Lost is good literature is an entirely different question. (Critics tend to say no; lay readers agree, with expected levels of generosity.) But, if Morrissey's public persona were encapsulated in a single mantra would be: Fuck critics. (Or royals. Or carnivores. Or Mike Judge, et. al.).
But, when it comes to The Literary Review's dubious prize, the panel says "bad sex" as if it weren't sometimes a great thing.