Thoughts of the day

I note with pleasure that Mr. Tsiolkas’ ( 'much-acclaimed’ seems to be the epithet of choice) novel, The Slap! has been nominated for one of the Bad Sex awards. He should certainly be awarded the prize, for the sex in the book is what debases what is otherwise a fair-to-good anatomy of Australian society. The plot is simple, its working-out consistently interesting: man at party slaps an obnoxious child, eight characters react differently to the ‘outrage’. Unfortunately, to find out their attitudes towards the incident, the hippy, the pc, the perp, etc., you have to wade through pages of tediously detailed sex amongst them.

From my limited experience, though I do have a number of friends in Australia, I do not believe this to be a national trait; I suspect it may be generational or, worse yet, personal to Mr. Tsiolkas, in which case he’s got a problem.

My view is that all explicit sex in fiction is boring in the extreme. It has been eschewed by every major writer since literature began. Anna Karenina did not exude, drip, sigh, exclaim, sweat, smell or otherwise pass on the intimate details of her unhappy affair.

I have always liked that article of the French Code which addresses the atteinte à la pudeur of minors: literally, an assault on their (supposedly) inherent modesty. We also badly need a prize for Immodesty: Lady Gaga, James Ellroy & Co.. For what we call today ‘celebrity’.