The initial direction of Kotzwinkle's work, from the publication of his first short stories and children's books in the 1960s, through the appearance of the ultimate counterculture cult novel The Fan Man (1974; see separate entry), and on through the novelization of Steven Spielberg's E.T. (The Extra-Terrestrial in His Adventure on Earth) in 1982, has been a comic and romantic one. The zany humor that characterizes much of his writing is a crucial component of his vision of existence, and it supports a comic conception that recognizes the exigencies of existence, but suggests that an ultimate, ideal version of society is within sight if not necessarily within reach. But even from the early stages of his career, a dark, alternative strain ran close to the surface, not greatly explored but acknowledged as a factor in human affairs. In the mid1970s, Kotzwinkle began to examine this element...