In Spain, it’s a much venerated literary prize and showcase for the country’s finest erotic writing.
But judges of the Vertical Smile have concluded that authors who specialise in this lauded oeuvre have lost some of their oomph.
For the second time in three years, judges have refused to select a winner for the â,¬20 000 (about R175 000) prize, saying the 152 entries were neither erotic enough nor well-written.
The publisher behind the prize, Tusquets, has now threatened to pull the plug on an award that had become a literary institution in Spain and launched the careers of several well-known writers, including Almudena Grandes and Eduardo Mendicutti.
It may be the final blow to a prize born 26 years ago during the sudden Spanish furore for all things naked or sexual, the so-called destape (”uncovering”) that followed the death of the dictator General Franco.
”We are going to think about the continuity of this award. We will say in April whether it will be held again and, if it does continue, what the new rules will be,” Tusquets said.
Grandes’ 1989 book, The Ages of Lulu, a tale of female sexual obsession and experimentation, has been the most successful of all prizewinners, translated into 20 different languages and made into a film by director Bigas Luna.
The prize has always enjoyed a degree of literary respect in Spain and judges have included the Nobel prizewinner Camilo José Cela.
It was created in the belief that hundreds of secretly written erotic novels were hidden in the homes of writers who feared to publish them while Franco, and his church censors, ran Spain for 40 years.
But those novels either never existed or failed to appear and, instead, the jury were, for the first few years, inundated with books in which phalluses fought with angels, wore masks and, in one case, dressed up as a bullfighter.
Among the less conventional scenes to have made it into the winning works are a homosexual relationship between Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson, and an English lord doing strange things with figs.
In Mercedes Abad’s 1986 winning book of short stories, after the female protagonist has had a near encounter with Sir Adolph and one of his figs, this scene unfolds: ”’You should never doubt before pleasure, or pleasure will mock you, if it so wants,’ Sir Adolph murmured, still close to me.
”’If you turn it down it may take some time before it offers itself once more, my dear … You should not be afraid. The fruit tempted you but you doubted; I know that your hesitation lasted only a few moments, but when you finally wanted it, the pleasure mocked you; remember that next time.’ … Sir Adolph called his manservant and ordered him to show me my rooms.”
The jury, headed by the film-maker Luis GarÃÂa Berlanga, praised one winning work for ”the richness of scenes that, aside from being fresh, turn out to be perverse, fetishistic and transgressive”. – Guardian Unlimited Â