Wednesday, November 28, 2007

a prize for bad writing

Britain has about a zillion literary awards, ranging from the best novel set in the village of XYZ, up to the prestigious Booker, Orange, etc. awards. To my knowledge there are only two "razzie" style awards, including one for the worst opening line (the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, in "honour" of the author of the opening line "It was a dark and stormy night ..."), and the notorious bad sex award, which gets acres of press coverage each year.

Now I wonder what this might be telling us ... I mean, in Spain there is a prestigious prize for good erotic writing, la sonrisa vertical. But British writers are still not allowed to write about the most natural thing in the world. (Seriously -- I have read opinion pieces in the press that effectively said, this topic should not be written about at all.) Though censorship battles have moved on to TV and watershed issues, I think ridicule might be nearly as effective as censorship.

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