The style and sensibility of The Fan Man invite comparison with some of the comic masterpieces of Western literary tradition, particularly the spirit of bawdy humor found in Rabelais, the Cervantic gravity of Don Quixote (another rueful figure), and most of all, the gentle, whimsical characters of Lawrence Sterne's Tristram Shandy (1759-1767). The form of Kotzwinkle's comic invention, though, is distinctly American, evolving from Jack Kerouac's "open" method of composition, and taking its language and shape from the work of Beat poets like Ed Sanders, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Gregory Corso. And somewhere in the background, the spirit of the nineteenthcentury Russian writers who created characters who refused to accede to the demands of the world exists as well.