Courtney Love presents the 2006 Bad Sex in Fiction Awardto Iain Hollingshead for his novel, Twentysomething.The nominees for Literary Review's 2009 Bad Sex in Fiction Awards were announced last Friday evening.The awards were established by the editors to “gently dissuade authors and publishers from including unconvincing, perfunctory, embarrassing or redundant passages of a sexual nature in otherwise sound literary novels.” They are annually awarded to the author who produces the worst, most laughable and/or jarring description of a sexual encounter in a modern novel.In other words, when sex scenes go horribly wrong secondary to punctuation, syntax, or falling off a...
Will the Real N.R. De Mexico Please Stand Up?
Madman on a Drum (Cavalcade Books, 1944)In 1944, a noir suspense novel, a paperback original, was issued by a small paperback publisher out of New York. Madman on a Drum would be the first full-length book written by one N.R. De Mexico. In 1951, De Mexico wrote a book that would put his name into the Congressional Record, front and center in a debate about the negative effect of paperback literature on American culture. That book, Marijuana Girl, would become Exhibit A in Rep. Ezekiel C. Gathings' Congressional Sub-Committee's mini-crusade against drug use in popular literature.Marijuana Girl (Uni Books 19,...
Gerda Yourselves For Pleasure: Wegener Bared at NYC Rare Book Shop-Gallery
Scène de Carnaval. ca. 1920s. [11" x 16 7/8"] A fine selection of works by famed Art Deco book illustrator and painter Gerda Wegener is on exhibition at Leonard Fox Ltd, in the rare book dealer’s shop-gallery on Madison Avenue in New York City October 29 through November 25, 2009.A small section of the exhibition.Where to begin about Gerda Gottlieb Wegener Porta (1886-1940)? Many, this author included, were first introduced to the Danish artist through her spirited and playfully exquisite erotic imagery. But her initial success was as a fashion and contemporary scene illustrator for Vogue, La Vie Parisienne, Fantasio,...
Erotika Biblia At The Colophon Club
Colophons will be swollen and printer slugs tumescent when Bruce Whiteman, Head Librarian at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library of U.C.L.A. in Los Angeles, presents an address to The Colophon Club of San Francisco on October 13, 2009 titled Erotika Biblia or, Collecting Naughty Books at a Distinguished Institutional Library (Not at the Public’s Expense, I Assure You).Bruce has been kind to share in advance with me the text of his lecture. In it, he discusses William Clark’s personal interest in erotica, erotica esoterica, and the kind of material in this area that Bruce has been acquiring for the...
Has The British Library Become a Brothel?
”All libraries are, of course, petri dishes of simmering lust, but the BL is extreme: its walls contain more erotic pressure than an oil rig, a North Sea fishing trawler and several series of Mad Men combined.”“The whole building sighs with hothouse groans, which swell and fade to muffle other sounds.”“When everyone is sitting around in silence, you can project what you like on to them and everyone remains a sexual possibility.”This is surely not the Queen’s library! Yet…“In 2006 a gay website exposed the British Library as a cottaging ground and the regular BL readers who I’ve discussed it...