Pictured: Animal instinct

Yes, it’s that time of year again. Last week, we asked MobyLives readers to vote for (or nominate) their favorite literary prize. One which was sadly missing from the list was the Literary Review’s “Bad Sex in Fiction” award, now in its eighteenth year. In a move that has been labeled “groundbreaking”, a non-fiction title is being considered for nomination. Tom Fleming, the deputy editor for the Literary Review, sponsor of the prize, spoke to Guardian Books and remarked at the”absolutely unprecedented” nature of the title in question.

This year — along with Solar by Ian McEwan, The Pregnant Widow by Martin Amis, and Freedom by Jonathan Franzen - ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair’s memoir A Journey is also in the running for its depictions of furious fumbling with his wife, Cherie. Below is the offending extract:

“That night she cradled me in her arms and soothed me; told me what I needed to be told; strengthened me; made me feel that I was about to do was right.On that night of the 12th May, 1994, I needed that love Cherie gave me, selfishly. I devoured it to give me strength. I was an animal following my instinct, knowing I would need every ounce of emotional power to cope with what lay ahead. I was exhilarated, afraid and determined in roughly equal quantities.”

The prestigious prize has been running since 1993, when Melvyn Bragg’s A Time to Dance first claimed the title. The main hope of the judges is “to draw attention to the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel, and to discourage it“. Previous winners of the prize also include Sebastian Faulks, for Charlotte Gray, Norman Mailer for The Castle in the Forest, and most recently, Jonathan Littell, for The Kindly Ones. This year, the official shortlist will be finalised over the next few weeks, with the winner being announced on November 29^th.

Compared to nominations from previous years, this is pretty tame stuff (see the Literary Review website for passages from previous nominees – not for the faint-hearted), but it is somehow unsettling, nonetheless. Now all I can do is try my best not to conjure up an image of the only thing worse than the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom giving in to his “animal instincts” – I guess that would probably be the former President of the United States. Deepest apologies in advance for that mental picture.