Talkative Man Talks

During the course of writing a weekly newspaper column for the El Paso Times for 20 years I invented several characters-Talkative Man The Whip the Mayor of Trance Town among them-whose conversations and interactions provided a useful vehicle for carrying certain ideas forward. I took this approach in the belief that satirical verbal exchanges between colorful characters in whimsical settings-such as the Loose Marbles School District-can expose the cracks in human nature and political systems with greater economy and alacrity than regular prose.In the vignettes included in this collection a removal of the disguise of nonsense and flamboyancy offers a window through which the real world comes into view replete with contradictions corruptions and celebrations.