Singer-songwriter Morrissey set for Bad Sex in Fiction award

Some people are infuriated when rock stars write a novel, even more so when they write about sex.

British singer Morrissey is a contender for the annual Bad Sex in Fiction Award.

What is it about rock stars writing novels that so infuriates some people? Having heaped scorn on List of the Lost, the debut novel of English singer-songwriter Morrissey, the lit-crit crowd is now cheering it home in the annual Bad Sex in Fiction Award.

Also shortlisted are George Pelecanos of The Wire fame (The Martini Shot), Aleksander Hemon (The Making of Zombie Wars), Richard Bausch (Before, During, After), Joshua Cohen (The Book of Numbers), Eric Jong (Fear of Dying), Lauren Groff (Fates and Furies) and Thomas Espedal (Against Nature). The Morrissey passage everyone is quoting runs: “At this, Eliza and Ezra rolled together into the one giggling snowball of full-figured copulation, screaming and shouting as they playfully bit and pulled at each other in a dangerous and clamorous rollercoaster coil of sexually violent rotation with Eliza’s breasts barrel-rolled across Ezra’s howling mouth and the pained frenzy of his bulbous salutation extenuating his excitement as it whacked and smacked its way into every muscle of Eliza’s body except for the otherwise central zone.” OK, so the cup is Morrissey’s to lose, but for mine he faces stiff competition from Bausch’s limp penis (“When she took him, still a little flaccid, into her mouth, he moaned ‘Oh, lover’.’’), Espedal’s equine erotica, which does not bear too much thought (“she grasps his long hair with both her hands and rides him as if he were a horse’’) and Cohen’s extraordinary ungulate imagery (“her breasts were like young fawns, sheep frolicking in hyssop”). The winner, if that’s the right word, will be announced on December 1.

Christmas stocking fillers, continued. American photographer Seth Cassell had a hit a few years ago with Underwater Dogs, a charming book of snapshots of submerged canines. Healthy, happy ones, I hasten to add: Cassell’s photos show dogs diving into pools for balls and the like. The book works because of its strange perspective: spotting a dog in a pool is not novel, but seeing them underwater, eyes and jaws agape in quest of their quarry, is fascinating and a little unsettling. They are so Other. Cassell’s book led to a litter of like-minded photographic investigations into canine (and feline) life. To my eye, some of these may as well be titled Cats (or Dogs) Doing Nothing Much, but perhaps I am not the target audience. Three new releases in my Christmas pile are the anonymously authored If It Fits, I Sits: Cats in Awkward Places (Orion, $19.99), Carli Davidson’s Shake Cats (HarperCollins, $24.99) and Jack Bradley’s Dogs in the Air (Hachette, $29.99). The first shows cats sitting in varying degrees of difficulty: the one in a laundry basket hardly holds the front page, though the one in a wine glass catches the attention. The second is by the author of “the bestselling Shake Dogs and Shake Puppies’’, works I missed the first time around. It shows cats shaking themselves, and most of them look like mutants, all lips and teeth, slobber and loose hair. If you happen to be on the losing side of a “Should we get a cat?” argument, buy this book for the yes camp. It may just sway things your way. Dogs in the Air interprets its title broadly, with several of the hounds in question just running really. But others are captured airborne, some spectacularly so. My favourite is a Boston terrier who has a look on his face that says he’s just realised the wisdom of the adage about looking before leaping.

Two great Australian writers, Christina Stead, who died in 1983, and Elizabeth Harrower, enjoying a literary resurgence at 87, are the focus of a two-day symposium at the University of NSW on December 3-4. Participants include David Malouf, Delia Falconer, Michelle de Kretser, Gail Jones, Fiona McFarlane and Ivor Indyk. Book online at https://sam.arts.unsw.edu.au/events/or call [phone]