The Fan Man
Stoned out of his mind and falling apart at the seams, Horse Badorties is joyfully distracted by a thousand schemes. His Lower East Side apartment is piled with sheet music, garbage bags bursting with rubbish, and frying pans embedded with unnameable flecks of grease. Even his roaches have roaches. But he is a genius with a mission.
The novel that introduced the world to Dorky Day, now profusely illustrated by Keith Bendis. Forward by Kurt Vonnegut.
WHAT CRITICS ARE SAYING
“That rare literary marvel, a book that makes you laugh till you have to put it down and catch your breath… What makes this a comic classic? Voice. The hilarious internal monologue that drives the protagonist through his days, a voice not unlike the one that rings deep and individually through all our brains.”
“The Fan Man is music to be played in the head, and only the quickest, least inhibited sight-readers can play it as written, and thus hear head music the likes of which, prior to its publication in 1974, had never been heard. It was and remains important…”
“This short, artfully structured, supremely insane novel is Buddha’s story, turned inside out… Horse Badorties walks into American literature a full-blown achievement, a heroic godheaded head, a splendid creep, a sublime prince of the holy trash pile… send congratulations to William Kotzwinkle, also a hero, man.”
“The Fan Man cuts through so many games that it leaves a trail of clear light.”
“The landmark novel of the dusking of the Age of Aquarius after its beatnik-hippie, speedfreak-pataphysician, revolutionist-artist Lower East Side decade-long summer of love – be-ins, psychedelics, dumpster prospecting, tenant squatting – is William Kotzwinkle’s The Fan Man.”
“A kind of Ginger Man, Lucky Jim, Huck Finn, and Easy Rider all mixed up in one… a marvelous creation.”
“Kotzwinkle’s story of a drug-flavored, flailing genius is a fine and funny piece of work that deserves to outlive many more studious efforts to limm the psychedelic ethos – and to wind up, perhaps, in some college lit class of the future, along with Thompson and Wolfe, all examples of a rare and exotic strain of experience that crept into the literature of the sixties and seventies.”
“Kotzwinkle has invented a human dada, full of one-line gags and comic perceptions.”
“Old Horse is one hell of a character, man.”
“A hilarious historical novel about the East Village, the summer of fifteen-year-old runaways, dope, music, truth, beauty, and living off the concrete, asphalt, asbestos land… The Aquarian age found its correct chronicler in this book.”
“This is one of my favorite books. Ever... The sixties are long gone (sigh). But William Kotzwinkle’s creation of a doped-up, cooled-out street bum – whose prize possessions include the self-given mantra “Dorky” and a fan that hums with the universe – lives on. Go on. Check it out.”