If one is an author in the current reading environment, one is told that to label something "literature" is to bestow upon it a kiss of death.
So if the word "sex" is associated with the word "literary," will that turn off otherwise interested readers in droves?
Literary Hub, an on-line aggregator of news and features about writing, could be about to find out. The service has just announced a single-elimination style tournament for "literary sex writing." Such prose evidently stands in sharp contrast to ordinary old sex writing and as such, may be considered a high-minded, as opposed to prurient, activity.
The organizers have chosen sixteen passages about sex from four historical periods and matched them up in a single-elimination style tournament bracket. No dramatic three-pointers as the buzzer sounds in this one. Instead a panel of eight judges, six of whom are women, will decide which ones win each individual match-up until one is declared champion.
Some of the 16 authors are fairly obvious and familiar names in the genre of writing about sex: Philip Roth, Henry Miller and D.H. Lawrence for instance. Readers may find some of the others a bit of a mystery as to just who they are, or more likely, who they were. Many others could have been included, the tournament organizers declared. Fancy that!
The selected literary passages and winners of each round will be revealed starting tomorrow, March 31. Literary Hub said.
Meanwhile, if you are interested in what's really selling these days when it comes to sex, you might want to look an an earlier post in this blog, which can be found here.
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