[Norman Mailer with 6th wife Norris Church, Source: NYTimes]

Norman Mailer was posthumously awarded the Bad Sex in Fiction Award, for his novel The Castle in the Forest. The irony is of course thick, given Mailer's active sex life (he was married 6 times!). Most interesting is that he was clearly on the forefront of the 1 day celebrity marriage that we see so often today. He separated from his fifth wife, Carol Stevens, one day after their wedding.

In any event, his description of the penis as an "old battering ram" clinched the award, and no doubt Mailer himself was a bit of an old battering ram as he edged into the twilight of his years. Norman Mailer you dirty old man you!