The Literary Review Just Got Exciting!

Well, it actually has been for the past 20 years, I just didn’t know. 



As a student of English literature, I’m no stranger to the Literary Review. It’s a place I regularly find myself trawling through, looking to impress my tutors with up to date criticism. I hope they might be duped into thinking that my fantastically relevant reference articles are pieces I merely happened across while eagerly flicking through my monthly subscription, rather than the product of a few haphazard taps of my keyboard (I don’t even have to type it all out any more - my igoogle page remembers my frequent and frantic search on the eve of every deadline).

But oh, how I have missed out in only giving this magazine the minutest fraction of my attention! I have been so dismissive and unappreciative. Blinkered by my narrow search criteria, driven solely by my quest for a precise result. And consequentially I have denied myself the world of pleasures available to those aware of all that this esteemed and valuable publication has to offer.

Did you know they do a BAD SEX AWARDS!?!


That’s the problem with us students. We’re only after one thing. Once we have our references we just toss the magazine aside, not taking the time to discover all its other beautiful aspects. Philistines.

It saddens me when I think about all the years of my life I’ve spent, unaware of the amazing invention that is The Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction Award. I feel similar to how I imagine the second dude to leave Plato’s cave felt. After continuing to resolutely face the cave wall, calling the first guy who climbed out a wally, telling him to stop talking nonsense, only using him to bring back that outside-chicken he got that somehow tasted so much better than shadow-chicken, I’ve finally seen the light. And I now know that I was the real wally. I’m newly enlightened, and embarrassed that I wasted so much time in the dark eating ghost meat.

Every year the Review holds a lush ceremony in London, where one deserving author (if they are brave enough to attend) is presented with a statuette of a naked woman splayed out across the pages of a book, and the title of ‘author of the worst description of a sex scene in a novel’. The award excludes erotic and pornographic fiction (so not a whiff of Christian Grey anywhere near this year’s shortlist). What they are looking for is ‘bad sex in good books’ (so again, Christian Grey nowhere in sight). The magazine’s website explains that the award is designed to draw attention to ‘crude, badly written, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description’, a common crime in contemporary novels, according this entertaining and informative video.

The Review are seeking in their own way to improve the standard of modern fictional sexy encounters by highlighting authors’ awkward metaphors and evasive similes; hopefully discouraging such badly written inclusions in future. The founder of the award, former editor of the Literary Review Auberon Waugh, started it due to his belief that publishers encouraged the inclusion of sexual content to boost novels’ sales.

On a serious note, this is an awesome cause: eliminating poor obligatory sexual content, and working towards making sure modern novels retain a beautiful literary standard. I don’t want sex scenes to become shoddy laboured requisites in every novel, be they crime, historical, or that Alan Bennett one about books and the Queen. I don’t want to become desensitised to the danger and excitement of a good sex scene by recurring dodgy content. I really like that there’s a (sort of) quality control working to stop rubbish sex scenes being brushed over by editors and publishers, due, I can only assume, to some sort of universal sub-conscious recognition that sex is always crude, and therefore can be crudely described, even in a really good book. Sex can’t just be prudishly accepted by authors and critics as resident in the land of awkward, embarrassed euphemism and unhelpful metaphor, not requiring the same powerful, expressive language one would use for describing deep seated emotion or a picturesque landscape.

On a less serious note, it’s also REALLY REALLY FUNNY. My favourite example is from 2010 winner, Rowan Somerville’s The Shape of Her:

'Like a lepidopterist mounting a tough-skinned insect with a too blunt pin he screwed himself into her' 

Is it just me who found that more reminiscent of Silence of the Lambs than of anything remotely sexual?

This award is without a doubt my best discovery of 2012. It’s light-hearted, entertaining, and is simultaneously allowing us to laugh out loud at awkward and far-fetched descriptions of sex, while keeping sacred our ability to have a little naughty giggle at the good stuff too.

Here’s some extracts from this year’s shortlist (hee hee hee!) I don’t know about you girls, but no part of my body is a bakewell pudding, or a light-sensitive manual camera. And jockeys don’t (to my knowledge) go inside saddles (pelvic or otherwise). And my Lady Jane is definitely nothing like a chrysanthemum (though I will admit my plant knowledge is pretty shaky, and I had to do a quick google image search just to check). Enjoy! 

The Quiddity of Will Self, Sam Mills

'Down, down, on to the eschatological bed. Pages chafed me; my blood wept onto them. My cheek nestled against the scratch of paper. My cock was barely a ghost, but I did not suffer panic' 

Noughties, Ben Masters

'We got up from the chair and she led me to her elfin grot, getting amongst the pillows and cool sheets. We trawled each other's bodies for every inch of history'

Back to Blood, Tom Wolfe

'Now his big generative jockey was inside her pelvic saddle, riding, riding, riding, and she was eagerly swallowing it swallowing it swallowing it with the saddle's own lips and maw — all this without a word' 

Rare Earth, Paul Mason

'He began thrusting wildly in the general direction of her chrysanthemum, but missing — his paunchy frame shuddering with the effort of remaining rigid and upside down'

The Yips, Nicola Barker

'She smells of almonds, like a plump Bakewell pudding; and he is the spoon, the whipped cream, the helpless dollop of warm custard'

Infrared, Nancy Huston

'This is when I take my picture, from deep inside the loving. The Canon is part of my body. I myself am the ultrasensitive film — capturing invisible reality, capturing heat' 

The Divine Comedy, Craig Raine

'And he came. Like a wubbering springboard. His ejaculate jumped the length of her arm. Eight diminishing gouts. The first too high for her to lick. Right on the shoulder'

The Adventuress: The Irresistible Rise of Miss Cath Fox, Nicholas Coleridge

'In seconds the duke had lowered his trousers and boxers and positioned himself across a leather steamer trunk, emblazoned with the royal arms of Hohenzollern Castle. 'Give me no quarter,' he commanded. 'Lay it on with all your might.' 

So there you go. You may have learnt nothing new about sex, but I personally was not previously familiar with the word ‘wubbering'. The winner will be announced on the 4th of December!

Am I A Middle-Class Wanker?

I wrote some thoughts in my notebook coming home on the 63 bus on Sunday:

Caitlin Moran’s column in the Times Magazine this weekend was about why, despite having her own conservatory and piano and recycled wine glasses, she still feels working rather than middle class. And how it’s not about how her life looks, but her frame of mind. What a silly thing to write for the Times! It’s only going to be read by other middle-class people at their kitchen tables over their morning filter coffee. None of her readership will identify with her at all!

As I read the column, eating grapefruit in my friend’s kitchen with all matching appliances (including an impressive 4-piece toaster with bagel button), I completely agreed with her. She admits that ‘the way we calibrate class in this country does indeed insist that if I were now … to claim that I am still working class, I would be, in some obscure way, a bit of a w***er’. And that is true. The logical explanation for this is that in identifying yourself as working class you are claiming you have less than you do, and to do so implies you do not appreciate what you have. I often worry about the level of hypocrisy I excude when I talk to my friends at university about the importance of unemployment benefits and child support and EMA while shopping for new dresses at the Bullring Topshop. But that doesn't stop me feeling working class, like my upbringing still matters. Class has not been defined purely in monetary terms by just about anyone for like, ages. The real reason you’re seen as a bit of a knob for distinguishing yourself as a class that belies your earnings, is that you’re seen as a try-hard. You’re like a tory MP rallying for votes in Sheffield by maintaining you’re best mates with Jarvis Cocker. But Jarvis Cocker has just as much money as a tory MP. Does that mean they are now of a similar social class? Does the fact that a bunch of people really really liked Pulp and paid money for their albums make Jarvis a wanker for continuing to sing about common people?  

Of course not. As humans we make stereotypes because we like to define things. We like rigid rules to dictate these definitions, so that we can recognise people and put them into categories easily. We want to know as much as we can about stuff; our brain naturally wants to fill in the gaps. So we like to be able to see a copy of The Art Book, or a Nigella recipe out in someone’s home and immediately be able to deduce from that that they also probably liked The White Album and have recently taken up knitting. All these traits are of course as unconnected to class as they are to each other. There seems to have been something of an obsession recently with defining ‘middle-class’. Recycling is middle-class, irony is middle-class, guilt is middle-class, swearing for effect is middle-class. Mocking the middle-class is middle class. According to the blog ‘Stuff White Brits Like’, ambivalence about Will Self is middle-class. Seriously? Ambivalence about Will Self is the default emotion everyone has about Will Self. Those overly long and complicated words he uses in his consciously deep and philosophical writing. He epitomises the ‘fit but you know it’ dilemma. Will Self himself is probably ambivalent about Will Self (the self-aware middle-class twat). It doesn’t matter how you were brought up and what you believe in. As soon as you start a compost heap or use the c-word you are no longer allotted the right to quote Arthur Scargill or drink tennants. It’s a package deal. You have to move out of your flat, take your compost and dirty words down to Surrey, buy a cat which you will have to name after an obscure 80s music icon and start a record collection. Because OBVIOUSLY there can’t be any overlap. Working and middle-class people can’t engage in the same activities. They are two distinct spheres. How on earth can people in completely separate worlds both follow Stephen Fry on twitter? It’s confusing an immovable divide!

Come on guys, it’s not about what you buy, or what music you listen to. I may buy organic when I can, and find Thom Yorke's voice enchanting and beautiful. But this is Britain, class is POLITICAL. Financially, my social class confuses me. Politically, it does not. Despite not having very much money when I was a child, I can’t deny the reasonable cushtie-ness of my life. Being met with the fierce scent from the brewery across the road every time we opened the door or window of our first Edinburgh flat made me feel poor (especially that time when upstairs had a shower and our kitchen ceiling fell in). Reading Irvine Welsh a few years later made me feel very, very well off. Mark Renton would shun me as a peroni-drinking university dickhead. I mean, my mum’s not a miner. She’s a camera operator. We have an imac. I’ve spent whole hours of my life convincing her of our new, undeniable middle-class status, pointing to the aforementioned snazzy computer, and her own black and white photography framed on the walls of our open plan living room. PRIVILEGE, DUH. But my reflex has always been to regard middle-class as something I’m surrounded by, rather than part of. I will still feel far more easily united under the phrase ‘tory scum’ than ‘squeezed middle’. As Ms Moran says, the good old days were only good for the man. Being working class is about change: ‘joy, revolution, progress, urbanity, carousing until you bust’. The only way is up. Restlessness; a need for change. Walking down Millbank on the first student fees march in 2010,the beautiful flames outside office buildings warming my belly and satiating my need for some kind of revolution (however small), I received a text from my grandma saying ‘I’m in Trafalgar Sq, where are you?’. That made me feel brilliant. She didn’t receive the call-to-arms passed round every student halls in the country, but still she wrapped herself up and left her Hertfordshire home to defend what she believed in. She remembered the importance of higher education not only in providing young people with degrees, but also an opportunity to GET OUT. Whether you’re looking from a balcony at the top of a tower block, or through your bay window onto a tree lined street, the world can still look old and crap, and in need of a reshuffle.

If our current earnings negate our past ones, then there’s no reason to hope to vote anyone into Parliament who will actually represent the working classes. If we connect salary with one’s ability to identify with certain classes, then as soon as anyone gets elected and settles into their accommodation near Westminster, we effectively retract their ability to communicate with the common man. I’m not saying social typecasting is the only thing stopping politicians being fair and open-minded. I’m not so naïve as to assume that our poor representatives really have a degree of ‘normality’ to prove, and we’re being unfair in branding them ridiculous for queuing up in northern pasty shops attempting to dupe us into thinking they’re just like Roger from Greggs except if he had power. I know they’re not stuck feeling hopelessly trapped in their lonely upper-class money bubbles, jumping up and down in a furious attempt to smash through the glass ceiling, trying desperately to free themselves from the GOSH DARN pheasant dinners and free police horse trials. But champagne socialism is rare. And people do play-up to their stereotypes. So putting so much emphasis on rigidly defined class, and labeling people as wankers for trying to contradict their background probably doesn’t help.  

OH. And why was I reading the Times Magazine on a Sunday morning, you ask? They don’t sell that it New York, do they? And you won’t have bought your way round the pay wall will you Siobhan, you blatant Guardian reader. Well no, that’s true. I was reading the weekend paper left on my friend’s kitchen table. In south London. I left my internship at BAB, and I left New York, and I flew back to England. They don’t really have class war there. Or healthcare. And the lights are really, really too bright. I had no kinfolk, and the utterly superfluous business of international bigwig schmoozery was getting me down big time. So I only lasted 3 months as a grown-up. I’m going to take a break and try again. Anyway, more explanation coming soon, but for now, it’s great to be back in the shire. Just great.  

At work on Friday, I thought about boardrooms, warzones and language

At work this week (this strange one-day week created by hurricane Sandy, throwing me all off kilter), I was logging the book reviews published in our latest magazine into the database. Our magazine is about corporate and international affairs, and is only circulated round our membership. All articles written in it therefore, are essentially for the purpose of networking. The book reviews section features publications (mostly non-fiction) written by our members: generally CEOs of large multi-nationals who somehow still manage to write books about their profession. It makes me suspicious. Either being a CEO is easier than it looks or the quality of the books is fairly bad. If you are able run a company and publish masterful business commentary on the side, you must be cutting some serious corners somewhere. (I’m sure Barack Obama shouldn’t have had the time to write that picture book.)

Having neither read any of the books featured, or planning to, I can’t give any further insight into this particular problem. In this instance, the thing that struck me most about these highly specific corporate business publications was their titles: they were all overtly war related. (The only exception to this was ‘How Excellent Companies Avoid Dumb Things’ which, judging by title only, I feel might lend some weight to my previous point about something having to give in the CEO/Author life balance to create such works. In the case of this author, time spent on creating an intelligent and poignant title clearly suffered. The one he landed on gives the impression that instead of writing a book, he just went through ‘Market Capitalism for Dummies’ and deleted out the cartoons of confused looking stick women). Some of these eponymous battleground associations included ‘The Commando Way’, ‘Courageous Counsel’ and ‘Army of Entrepreneurs’. I think this reflects a general attitude surrounding the world of business. Whether it’s in the boardroom or ‘The Devil Wears Prada’, the corporate world is constantly presented to us in combative terms: it’s a harsh, unforgiving, aggressive environment. And seeing all these titles listed on the same page in front of me really made me think about how deep the comparison goes. From every angle, business is seen like a warzone; especially at the highest international level, where extreme free-market economics is generally the ideal. Survival of the fittest. The words ‘cutthroat’ and ‘dog-eat-dog’ are savoured in the mouths of both high up executives and beginning entrepreneurs. For some reason, this language is not considered to be reflective of a dangerous or unhealthy environment, but one to be survived and therefore one reserved for the best. I don’t for a second claim to be a business expert (if you’ve read much else on this blog you will know that I profess quite the opposite), but I think this image of business is probably both unhealthy and unnecessary for modern corporations. Or for the people that have to live in the same world as them at least. 

We know that the highest corporate boardrooms are a boys club, and always hear complaints about women not being able to break the glass ceiling into the offices surrounding Wall St and St Pauls. The constant presentation of business in such an aggressive and warlike way probably has no small part in that. The high up executive positions, like in the army, are advertised to appeal to men. Combat has been presented in this way since the dawn of time. I mean we all know war is justsophallic. Impaling spears gave way to stabbing swords which were replaced with ejaculating missiles. Even the term CEO, Chief Executive Officer, evokes battle-zone vocabulary. I know ‘Officer’ has the word ‘office’ in it, but I’m sure it was an army term before it was a business term. And I’m also sure that it wasn’t lifted from combative ranks unintentionally. Even if it wasn’t a conscious decision, the connotations of the title of ‘officer’ are significant at least on a subconscious level, in conveying what the expectations of the role are, and who is going to desire it. Much like in the army, the title of Chief Executive Officer is just another way for the less physical but equally competitive men in our world to metaphorically display the size of the gun they are carrying. The only thing missing is the pervasion of an offensive, ironic, sexy-CEO Ladies’ costume, mirroring that of ‘army girl’, to make the same gender bias official.

I don’t think business needs this reputation of violence and aggression being the way to succeed. It seeps through every section of corporation until it becomes normalcy. And you only need to watch one episode of ‘The Apprentice’ to see that those aggressive qualities in isolation do not make for a good business environment. They don’t even make good T.V.

It’s a sickening culture, and language is just the tip of the iceberg. We’ve all been agreed for a while that real international war-zones are bad, and should generally be avoided where possible. Even the Prince of warmongering, George W. Bush, conceded that he thinks ‘war is a dangerous place’ (well done G). So it can’t be a positive thing for the same imagery used to make war seem appealing to filter into business vocabulary. It makes (and has made) business exclusively for ball breakers and cutthroats, it perpetuates gender-bias, and excludes potentially successful and intelligent people who don’t fancy constantly being on the attack. People who perhaps could use international commerce as a force for good. It makes the highly questionable moral decisions of the Union Carbides and the BPs of the world that much more common and acceptable. Just as morality is suspended in a battleground, so does it seem to be suspended when corporate greed is at play.

International business should not be a war-zone. And if all war could stop too that would be great. Thanks, world

Yours Sincerely,

Siobhan Palmer.

Monday, 11.16pm

I really like it when the man in the apartment next door sings. He’s awful. At the moment he’s practicing this strange warbling song, which seems to only consist of the lyrics ‘hey yooouuu, hey yooouuu’. I certainly wouldn’t be wooed by it if he was using it to serenade me, but through the anonymity of the walls I’m enjoying it. I like hearing other signs of life from my boxed in little room; listening to his crap music is sort of the closest thing I have to looking out a window. In the aftermath of a hurricane, hearing music pipe up in the dark is doubly nice to hear… It better be the bloody aftermath anyway. If the last few hours have just been God having a bubble then that man will have a lot to answer for when I get up there. I imagine he has a lot to answer for anyway though, what with the increasing famines and tsunamis and things. Sorry, sorry, not God - CLIMATE CHANGE. Silly me.  

But yeah, the singing, I’m enjoying it.  My links to the outside world are depleting rapidly: everyone having gone to bed in England and America, my storm updates are now coming to my phone via my mum in Australia, when she gets a chance to watch the news. Apparently ‘Today in Aussie Parliament’ is on the set right now so I won’t have any more information for at least an hour. And so neighbor-man’s distant, warbling, uneven tones are acting like my comforting nightlight. Not that I need a nightlight anyway - I’m not turning the main light off just in case when I flick the switch to turn it on again nothing happens... This blog is highlighting a massive gap in my knowledge, isn’t it? Seeing the evidence mount up here on virtual paper, I’m suddenly realising how perfectly dreadful my understanding of technology is. I mean, I didn’t think I was the next Steve Jobs or anything, but I thought I had the essentials, you know? I'll have to add it to the list of basic life-skills that happen to have passed me by, along with mental maths, swimming and knowing difference between and ‘your’ and ‘you’re.’ Well, now I've accepted my status as technological dunce, I might as well take this opportunity to point out that my posts would be much better ordered, over a number of thematic pages if only I could work out how to do it. It’s not for lack of trying. So if one day you click on a link and my blog has suddenly become a well ordered, wordy paradise, send me some congratulatory flowers or something, because I will be extremely proud of myself, and be expecting a big to do.

It’s been calm outside for a while now, so with no more shaking walls or crashing roofs, just the pattering of the rain and the bad singing next door, and I am actually going to sleep now.

Monday, 9.34pm

I wish I lived a floor down. The wind really picked up in the last few hours, and there are some banging noises on the roof making my whole little attic room shake. If this is what it’s like in a sturdy, brick apartment block in New York City, I can’t imagine what it must have been like for people in their wooden houses on the coast down south, or in the Caribbean, with buildings still being rebuilt from Haiti’s last earth-shattering natural disaster. Still, I have prepared myself. My good-for-nothing, internet-less laptop is packed away with my camera and other valuables, ready for swift saving should I need to make a speedy getaway, and everything that previously sat under the suspect nailed up trapdoor in the ceiling (a clear weakpoint, where the crashes get very loud), has been moved into the far corner of the room. I shall sleep tonight in my barricaded fortress (with my teddy):

The sign may have been excessive. I cannot convey to you how much of a loss I have been at without the internet. Updates on the storm are being texted to me by my very helpful friend on her laptop in Georgia, but other than that, my contact with civilisation is severely limited. So yes, I’ve made a fort, named it after myself and written a sign. For the moment, it is my world. Goodnight, outside-folk. 

Monday, 7.02pm

The internet connection is gone! Gone! I was prepared to lose electricity, water, heat, sanity … but INTERNET? This is AMERICA. The thought of what I’m going to do for the next 36 hours is not something I actually have the ability to contemplate. I mean, Edward just died. What on earth is Dodo going to do? Is she going to do as he would have wanted? Or keep on seeing Mr. Ladislaw, with his Byronic attraction and rebellious charm? And did Dr. Lydgate marry Rosie for love? I have a feeling he may not have done (I mean who would? She’s really annoying). Will Fred ever manage to repay Mary’s father? My brain literally can’t hold this many questions for 36 hours. Or longer. Who knows when the internet will return?? The lights have started intermittently flickering too (genuinely. My flatmate can now back me up on this, we both saw it). I think it’s time we all went to the Winchester, had a pint, and waited for all this to blow over.

Monday, 5.01pm

SANDY'S A GIRL! Why has no-one been putting more emphasis on this point? None of the news channels had suitably informed me about this. I had to google it. And it wasn't even an easy google. It took some digging. I feel like such a fool thinking of it as male all this time. Does that make me a sexist? Or just not a big enough Grease fan?

...

I'm sorry, more thoughts on that point were coming, but I just got distracted and completely lost my train of thought. I thought the light in my room flickered, and I froze in fear of losing power. Then I blinked, and thought the light flickered again, and got really tense. I've been sat up, straight backed like a startled rabbit, occasionally blinking to see if it looks the same as a light flickering, trying to catch myself out by blinking before I think of blinking. It's 10 minutes later now. I think I may have just blinked the first time as well. The power's still on.