The Fan Man Summary
William Kotzwinkle

Everything you need to understand or teach The Fan Man by William Kotzwinkle.

  • The Fan Man Summary & Study Guide

The Fan Man Summary

The Fan Man is an almost agonizingly sweet lament for a man caught between an unconventional, highly personal vision of existence and the casual horror of urban life in contemporary America. Because Horse Badorties is involved in such seemingly trivial activity (waking up; ordering food; organizing a musical performance) his encounters and disruptions are cast in a highly comic form, but it is his soul and sanity which are actually at stake in each instance of confusion and perplexity. He is a mutant form of the classic "outsider," the man apart, who does not quite fit into the flow of any society. Even in his own milieu, the demi-bohemia of New York's counter-culture, he is never really able to communicate clearly, although his amiability and deceptive acuity tend to mask this. Badorties's adventures are a strong argument for the preservation of a unique, individual consciousness against all the...

(read more from the Short Guide)

Study Pack

The The Fan Man Study Pack contains:

The Fan Man Short Guide