Man Talking: The Official Website of Mike Heppner
Author of the novels The Egg Code and Pike's Folly, and the short fiction collection The Man Talking Project.
Reply To: pike@mikeheppner.com
The webmaster reserves the right to edit all responses for content.
"My name is Gina. I am a senior at Temple University in Philadelphia double majoring in Dance and Psychology. I found Man on a table in the Honors Lounge and just started reading. I found the story quite touching, particularly the segments that described specific things the character remembered from each period. As a choreographer I am often trying to use gestures, memories and intimate details to bring people into my dances; I feel like this is what made Man successful. Besides those paragraphs, I most enjoyed the honest description of the character's life as he worked toward becoming a success and the price he paid for it. There is so much pressure, I find, to have a specific goal and be successful at it, but when you speak with those who have found success, they are not necessarily much happier than anyone else."
"Hi, my name is Ed. I'm a senior, Psychology major at Arcadia University just outside of Philly. I was mostly suspicious after skimming the cover of Man at a front table in the university library. Haha. I still am... Like, is this for real? But the concept was too intriguing for me to ignore it completely. It may just be me, because despite being an avid reader it always takes me a couple of pages to really get into a story, but after the first couple of pages I wasn't particularly taken to this one. It was obviously well-written, but I didn't feel captured. And yet I was. I couldn't put it down because it had to go somewhere. And then it did. And I felt it. It was the
'what I remembered's that kept me reading. I stopped and considered my own daydreams of success and 'what might be' fantasies. It was then, I think, that I could identify with the character's hopes... later, the disappointments... and mainly just the process of carving out a place for himself in the world."
"My name is Eli, and I'm an undergrad studying computer science and music at the University of Chicago. My friend J gave me a copy of Man over midnight ice-cream, and I read it the next day. I applaud your experiment because I like the idea and because Man was nice to read. I've dabbled in writing for the last four or five years and I know exactly what it feels like... We have to remember that the worthwhile part is intangible, is what's going on in our own heads and lives. The description of the main character's wife's battle... was tactful and powerful, and the happy ending... was relieving and at the same time surprising..."
