Years and years ago, I saw Stephen King and Peter Straub do a joint talk/reading about their collaborative work-in-progress, The Talisman (published in 1984--yes, I'm just that old. Or just that cool, depending on your point of view).
As they discussed their working method--Peter at his home working on his word processor, Steve at his home with his, there were a lot of jokes tossed about, because both worked on Wang machines. Or, as one of them put it (more than once), "I sit aroound my house playing with my big Wang, and then I send it to him and he plays with his Wang for a while." There was discussion of whose Wang was bigger. Plenty of Wang jokes. One expects it from Steve--Peter comes across as classier, but he can get down in the gutter with the best of 'em.
As I said, that was a long time ago, and sometimes when I tell the story I almost start to think I imagined it, because I can't find anybody else who was there.
But now author Matthew G. Kirschenbaum is giving a talk on the history of writers and their word processors, and he's calling it "Stephen King's Wang: The Literary History of Word Processing." It's at the New York Public Library on Dec. 16. It sounds like it'll be a lot of fun--if you're in NYC I hope you can go.
So there--I didn't make it up.
I wasn't there either. I remember reading somewhere about and Stephen getting " a big Wang" though.
Posted by: Randy Johnson | December 01, 2011 at 09:02 AM