“It reads like a heightened satire of a life on the lowest tier of show business, but I’m here to tell you it all rings true,” Marc Maron, who’s hosted Tallent on his own podcast, said of the work.
But Tallent, a towering man who passed up an opportunity to play college football at Brown University, is hoping for more.
“I really want to be talked about in the fucking magazines that I subscribe to,” Tallent, 37, told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay, alluding to publications like the New York Review Of Books. He doesn’t regret any aspect of releasing the book himself, but the literati shits on self-published work, perhaps to protect the sacred rights of MFA programs across the world. It’d be nice, he said, to be invited to fancy dinner parties or sit on author panels.
“All that pretentious shit that no one is reading—I am actively engaged in that world. It would just be fun to be fully submerged in it,” Tallent added. “And I want everyone to say, ‘Good job. You can hang out at our table.’ That’s all it is.”
His fortunes might change after next year. The draft of Tallent’s forthcoming novel, “Petillant Brut,” is due in the summer. In the spring, he’s moving to Paris for six weeks to finish the book, do fact-checking since it’s set in the City of Lights, and do some comedy, too.
Tallent doesn’t even like tote bags, but now uses the one he got on a visit to Random House—his new publisher, which is releasing the book on hardcover—on the daily.
“Only because it’s a very, very simple flex on my behalf. If anyone ever asked, like, ‘Oh, where did you get that? I can be like, Oh… you know,” he laughed, adding that he senses himself becoming more bizarre.
“I’m OK with it,” Tallent said. “I don’t know, maybe I’m being more OK with the person I am.”
Two decades into his career, the person Tallent is had made him into a more popular comedian than he’s ever been. And he’s headed back to Tampa Bay.
“It would be very irresponsible to take my foot off the gas right now, after achieving momentum from almost 20 years in stand up,” he said about the notion of hanging up the jokes to focus on writing should his new book take off.
His audiences are better for it. A lot of the gig Tallent brings to five shows at Side Splitters in Carrollwood this weekend is riffing and looking into the crowd for stimuli to respond to. He’s proud of it, but he’s not precious about the act either.
“I wouldn’t call myself an artist for doing stand-up. I’m a craftsman,” he said. “But I have one intent. I’m not trying to get an emotional response. If they’re not laughing, I’m failing.”
And when the improvisation ends, Tallent—who grew up in Colorado, before traveling the country DIY style and even living at an anarchist compound in Ithaca—will deploy what calls a new hour of jokes that he’s proud of. “I think they’re the smartest jokes I’ve ever done, and definitely come the most from me, as opposed to just trying to write funny jokes like Dave Attell and crush,” he said.
In a world where some comedians have started to use platforms like “The Joe Rogan Experience” to spew “anti-woke” ideals while playing the victim and punching down in a gross, bigoted win-win, Tallent’s comedy stands apart while still managing to push crowds to the point of discomfort.
Early in his 2021 special, “Waiting for Death to Claim Us,” he makes an Alabama audience think about police brutality. On 2023’s “The Toad’s Morale”—released by rising comedic giant Shane Gillis—he confronts misogyny with a trans joke that insiders are still talking about.
Just this month in San Diego, Tallent, who’s been on Rogan’s podcast two times, did 20 minutes on his wife being an abortion provider—much to the shock of his managers who came to check out a set. 
Tallent thinks treating comedians like modern pundits goes a little too far. He’s not sure if the issue in comedy is woke or anti-woke, either. “I think it’s just like empathy versus lack of empathy,” he added.
It’s perplexing, he said, to see people who’re all about freedom and liberty not wanting others to have freedom and liberty with their own bodies. Same for folks openly taking drugs and hallucinogens pushing back on body autonomy, or those who’re working out to get their bodies to look a certain way.
“You definitely understand that you’re not in the body that you want to be in, and then you do what you have to to achieve that body,” he added. “I don’t know. It seems like A leads to B leads to C, and the cognitive dissonance in between is very weird to me.”
Tallent’s values, he explained, can be attributed to a good upbringing, with two parents, and a network of family who all led by example. His mother, who passed away in 2021, had an acerbic, dry, sense of humor; she gifted Tallent improv lessons for his 18th birthday instead of telling him to quit. Dad, Tallent said, is silly-funny and could’ve been a stand up if that was an acceptable career in the ’70s.
Reading books played into his sense of empathy, along with another element of his growing up.
“LSD was huge. Mushrooms were a big part of that, too,” he said, adding that he took his first hit at 16 years old and didn’t really shy away from it until he turned 32. It’s hard to tell if Tallent is joking about that, but he said that it definitely helped him cope with loneliness and feel connected to the world—and people—around him.
“I’m always very intrigued by people,” he said about his habit of talking to strangers on the street.
This weekend, Tampa comedy fans get a chance to have Tallent talk to them. There’s a very good chance that the conversation will be mind-blowing, too.
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This article appears in Nov 14-20, 2024.