Eccentric individualiry in William Kotzwinkle's The Fan Man, E.T., Doctor Rat, and other works of fiction and fantasy

Authority and identity - lunatic horror, wild things, the surreal city and a serpent in the garden the book of love - origins of artistic consciousness in "Jack in the Box" the realm of childhood - visions of paradise and an imagination of the ideal in "E.T.", "The Leopard's Tooth" and "Hearts of Wood" the life and times of a good-natured zany - the artist as musician, mystic, beatnik and freak in "The Fan Man" the emergence of evil - darker dimensions of existence in "Doctor Rat", "Fata Morgana" and "The Exile" the artist at work - sexual awareness as psychic transformation in "Nightbook" and "The Queen of Swords", limitless childhood as an adult enterprise in "The Midnight Examiner" and "The Hot Jazz Trio" Jimmy McShane and a bear from Maine - life beyond the "failure" of the alternate vision of the sixties in "The Game of Thirty" and "The Bear Went Over the Mountain" the far shore of the secret sea -refiguring the cartography of coherence in "Superman III", "Great World Circus" and "Swimmer in the Secret Sea".