...because chances are, if you're inflicting one of these turgid passages on the world, you really have no clue how people are reacting to such prose.

Yup, it's that time of year again, and the award for worst depiction of copulation will be given out this Thursday at London's In and Out Club to one of eleven lucky nominees. The competition is fierce, and star-heavy: John Updike, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Giles Coren, Salman Rushdie, just to name a few (though my vote goes to Ben Elton. Why? Because this might give him a good excuse to stop writing crapass novels. You think?)

Of course, the fun is figuring out how to pick a winner who will actually show up to take his (usually his) lumps about writing about sex so badly. Last year they goofed, as Tom Wolfe sniped that the competition didn't take into account that he wrote ironic bad sex. Having read some of those winning passages, I can safely say that the irony meter was set very, very low...