To spice up the excitement of our evening of literary pleasure I suggested we each read a little of our respective books to each other. Why not? My wife goes first with a page from Dostoyevsky, which in part reads like this
... I think you get the idea. A Russian master deep in the middle of one of his greatest works.Having uttered that last phrase he had suddenly sensed, with a feeling of hopelessness, that the whole thing had fallen through, and that all he had done was to talk the most dreadful gibberish. "It's strange: while I was on my way here, everything seemed fine but now I'm spouting all this gibberish!" suddenly rushed through his hopeless head. During all the time he had spoken the old man had sat immobile, watching his every movement with an icy expression in his gaze. Then, however, having sustained him in expectation for a moment or two, Kuzma Kuzmich at last gave utterance in a most resolute and joyless tone: "I'm sorry, sir, we do not involve ourselves in business of that kind."
My turn. I turned to page 404 of my paperback of Wizard and Glass, and began reading...
All of this Rhea saw in the glass, and wery interesting viewing it made, aye, wery interesting, indeed. But she'd seen shagging before - sometimes with three or four or even more doing it at the same time (sometimes with partners who were not precisely alive) - and the hokey-pokey wasn't very interesting to her at her advanced age. What she was interested in was what would come *after* the hokey-pokey.
*Is our business done?* the girl had asked.
*Mayhap there's one more little thing,* Rhea had responded, and then she told the impudent trull what to do.
Aye, she'd given the girl very clear instructions as the two of them stood in the hut doorway, the Kissing Moon shining down on them as Susan Delgado slept the strange sleep and Rhea stroked her braid and whispered instructions in her ear. Now would come the fulfillment of that interlude...and that was what she wanted to see, not two babbies shagging each other like they were the first two on earth to discover how 'twas done.
Twice they did it with hardly a pause to natter in between (she would have given a good deal to hear that natter, too). Rhea wasn't surprised; at his young age, she supposed the brat had enough spunkum in his sack to give her a week's worth of doubles, and from way the little slut acted, that might be to her taste. Some of them discovered it and never wanted aught else; this was one, Rhea thought.
This eloquent passage penned by our illustrious Mr King, resulted in a good 30 seconds of stunned silence from my wife, then, the repetition of one word, increasingly louder with each pronunciation.
Spunkum...Spunkum...SPUNKUM?!
After much discussion I was able to successfully argue that Stephen King is very, very widely read, and is considered by many to be one of the great authors of our time.
Needless to say, The Dark Tower has been dubbed the "spunkum book" by my lovely wife. Throughout the rest of the holiday experience, I was plagued with inquiries regarding my spunkum, the spunkum book, and any other manner of spunkum related queries, accompanied by dark and moody glances.
You never can tell where topics are gonna go on the Watch.