The Fan Man

The Fan Man is a comic novel published in 1974 by the American writer William Kotzwinkle. It’s told in the 1st-person by the narrator, Horse Badorties, a down-at-the-heels hippie living a life of drug-fueled befuddlement in New York City c. 1970. The book is written in a colorful, vernacular “hippie-speak” & tells the story of the main character’s hapless attempts to put together a benefit concert featuring his own hand-picked choir of 15-year-old girls.Horse is a somewhat tragic, tho historically humorous, character with echoes of other famous characters in popular culture such as Reverend Jim Ignatowski of Taxi fame. In his inability to follow anything thru to completion he displays symptoms of attention-deficit disorder tho this could equally be drug-induced. His defining characteristic is his joy in renting or commandeering apartments which he fills with street-scavenged junk articles until full to bursting he moves on to his next “pad”. The name “fan man” is a reference to another of his traits; the collecting of fans of all shapes & sizes.