First, Johnson’s:

“Almost screaming after five agonizingly pleasurable minutes, I make a grab, to put him, now angrily slapping against both our bellies, inside, but he holds both by arms down, and puts his tongue to my core, like a cat lapping up a dish of cream so as not to miss a single drop.”

Dear god. I think I’m blushing just copying and pasting.

But in "Indignation," Roth (who's guilty of at least one or two “What was he thinking? He’s fucking what, and how?” moments) manages to make a passage sensual — sexy without being overdone — despite strong potential for it to jump over the fence. In one scene, college boy Marcus marvels at Olivia’s “darting, swabbing, gliding, teeth-licking tongue, the tongue, which is like the body stripped of its skin.”

I’ll admit, I have a soft spot for the “Red Hot Reads” section. I love the premises of the selected novels: The private investigator who falls for the woman he’s supposed to be following; the hot-shot lawyer who seduces her possibly murderous client; the amusement park engineer and vacationing mom who embark on a torrid love affair. Most of the female characters, it seems, are always named Summer or Heather or something like a Stevie Nicks song, and the men, more often than not, Dylan — always described as “strapping.”

But just as so much of the pleasure of reading fiction can be derived from its escapist qualities, one would think sex — even the most embarrassing, uncoordinated episodes — would be more elegantly, eloquently described. Or at the very least, make more sense. (From Irvine Welsh’s "The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs": “Work it in, Mary urged, as Skinner took his thick green slime and spread it like a chef might glaze some pastry, at the same time slowly breaching and exploring.” Cute.)

But for budding writers with aspirations of badness, it may be encouraging to know that it’s not necessary to script an entire sex scene, or even an entire novel, to win a cash prize. The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest was established in 1982, named for the author of the introduction “it was a dark and stormy night,” and gives a $250 award for the best submission of a worst first line. This year’s winner, from a gentleman named Garrison Spik of Washington D.C., however, shows that the power of impassioned, hot, breathy love still has a firm hold on inspiring bad writing.

“Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped ‘Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J.’ ”