Hard decision ...

... Bad sex award shortlist pits Philip Roth against stiff competition. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

The Pulitzer prize-winning Roth makes the line-up for The Humbling, in which the
ageing actor Simon converts Pegeen, a lesbian, to heterosexuality. The Literary
Review singled out a scene in which Simon and Pegeen pick up a girl from a bar
and convince her to take part in a threesome. Simon looks on as Pegeen uses her
green dildo to great effect. "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," writes Roth. "There was
something dangerous about it. His heart thumped with excitement – the god Pan
looking on from a distance with his spying, lascivious gaze."

This is at least the second long quote from this book that I have seen. Forget the bad sex. What about the god-awful writing?