This article deals with the novel. For the paraglider, see Fan Man.

The Fan Man is a comic novel published in 1974 by the American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 writer William Kotzwinkle

William Kotzwinkle

William Kotzwinkle is an American novelist, children's writer, and screenwriter. He was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania. He has won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel for Doctor Rat in 1977, and has also won the National Magazine Award for fiction. Kotzwinkle wrote the novelization of the...

. It is told in the first-person by the narrator, Horse Badorties, a down-at-the-heels hippie

Hippie

The hippie subculture was originally a youth movement that arose in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to other countries around the world. The etymology of the term 'hippie' is from hipster, and was initially used to describe beatniks who had moved into San Francisco's...

 living a life of drug-fueled befuddlement in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 c. 1970. The book is written in a colorful, vernacular "hippie-speak" and tells the story of the main character's hapless attempts to put together a benefit concert

Benefit concert

A benefit concert or charity concert is a concert, show or gala featuring musicians, comedians, or other performers that is held for a charitable purpose, often directed at a specific and immediate humanitarian crisis. Such events raise both funds and public awareness to address the cause at...

 featuring his own hand-picked choir of 15-year-old girls.

Horse is a somewhat tragic, though historically humorous, character with echoes of other famous characters in popular culture such as Reverend Jim Ignatowski

Jim Ignatowski

The Reverend Jim "Iggy" Ignatowski, played by Christopher Lloyd, was a fictional character in the 1970s television series Taxi. A gentle soul, Jim was, in his own words, "the living embodiment of the sixties". His most noticeable character trait was his extreme "spaced-out" behavior as a result of...

 of Taxi

Taxi (TV series)

Taxi was an American sitcom that originally aired from 1978 to 1982 on ABC and from 1982 to 1983 on NBC. The series, which won 18 Emmy Awards, including three for "Outstanding Comedy Series", focuses on the everyday lives of a handful of New York City taxi drivers and their abusive dispatcher...

 fame. In his inability to follow anything through to completion he displays symptoms of attention-deficit disorder though 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 and sizes.