Review of Talking Man by Terry Bisson

For people who regularly read, undoubtedly you have that writer who, upon completion of one of their books or stories, you say to yourself: Why am I not reading more by them?!?! I also have a few such authors, of which Terry Bisson is one. Attempting to remedy regret, I jumped into Talking Man (1986).

Backcover copy for Talking Man is likely not to induce interest. A book that needs to be experienced, boiling it down to its component parts is like boiling a human down to a skeleton; you can tell something about it, but it's flesh and blood that give it character. So, I could say Talking Man is: a surrealist teenage '60s road trip chasing down a supernatural engine mechanic from the Kentucky foothills who has had a numinous glass owl stolen from him. But that might just register as odd, no? It is, however, the skeleton.

The flesh and blood of Talking Man is the pace, the prose, and the the sheer wonder of story. In every word, paragraph, and page, Bisson is a born bard. The reader doesn't always know why the two teens are chasing Talking Man, or why the Woman-in-White is so hell bent on murder, or why the apocalypse seems to have rained down on eastern Missouri, or why Talking Man never says a word. But Bisson's style grabs you and won't let you. You're on for the ride, and you don't care why. In the moment, with limited info, but with an authorial voice that has its fangs pumping dopamine into your neck, you believe you're going somewhere great. Hang on! And the journey is indeed worth it.

Talking Man features a wizard, an evil temptress, and two young heroes who use what little skills and luck they have in an exotic land to fight evil. But Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gene Wolfe's Soldier of the Mist, or Anna Kavan's Ice are imminently closer contemporaries to Bisson's novel than Tolkien, Beagle, T.H. White, or any other writer of fantasy. It's a rural American Mad Max dream of Jung. Try finding another book like that. You can't, which is one of the reasons Bisson's novel is so special.

In the end, my review, in this microscopic hole of the web, cannot revive Talking Man from the sands of time. But if by chance you do happen here and read this, have a try. It’s a true gem that deserves preservation in readers' imaginations and memories. For me, it's yet another reason to continue remedying the regret of having not read more Bisson sooner.