MINI-REVIEW | The Fan Man by William Kotzwinkle (Vintage)

William Kotzwinkle is best known as the author of the novelization of E.T. The Extra Terrestrial and the Walter the Farting Dog children series. Most people don't realize what amazing adult fiction he has written such as his Doctor Rat, which won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel in 1977 along with a lot of other counter-culture themed novels. Kotzwinkle is also the author one of my favorite reads earlier this year The Bear Who Went Over the Mountain (pub. 1995) about a bear who happens upon a manuscript and decides to try to get it published, which leads him on an incredibly funny journey to bestsellerdom. Kotzwinkle manages to stretch what sounds like an ehh idea into a book that is a complete joy to read. I would recommend Bear to anyone, even those not interested in speculative type reads although it is more in the vein of a Muppet movie for adults. After reading Bear I was eager to get into some other Kotzwinkle books, which led me to The Fan Man, one of Kotzwinkle's earliest works and is still something of an underground classic having been in print more than 35 years. The Fan Man is a week in the life of Horse Badorties told from his point of view in his very own hippie language circa 1970. Horse is not a horse. Horse is an aging hippie burn-out with a serious case of ADD who somehow makes everything he wants happen. Well, kinda. He is not the down and out type. He has everything he needs in his piles of trash and somehow finds anything he could ever want when he wants it until he sees something else he wants. It takes a little while to get use to Horse's voice as every fourth word is Man. As in "Hey Man. What's going on, Man." But once you get use to that it is an amazingly silly journey with the Knight of the Hot Dog as he goes on missions that quickly turn into wanderings in NYC. At first I thought I would get burned out on Horse, but quickly grew on me. I was constantly shocked by the different levels to Horse as he interacts with people. Surprisingly, Horse is something of a musical genius with his moon lute and leads a choir of young ladies whom he is hoping to eventually bed. Nearly every page had me chuckling as Horse switches between pure lucidity to ramblings no one even in a drugged out state could follow. Overall, I was surprised how fresh a book written 30 plus years ago still holds up. It was nice to see how NYC looked back than as well when it wasn't such a clean place. This was when the West Village was still very much the center of counter culture. At a breezy 200 pages this can easily be read in a couple sittings as most chapters are only a few pages and Horse's thoughts and dialogue drew me in. I give The Fan Man 8 out of 10 Hats. Now if only Kotzwinkle would write the follow-up to Bear which is supposed to be Bear for President I'd be a very happy reader. Book link: US Europe Canada