822. The Midnight Examiner

The Midnight Examiner
William Kotzwinkle
1989

Around 320 pages

As much as I love the name Kotzwinkle, I haven't been too impressed by his work, and I don't think he is worthy of two entries. If it's the first page, and I am already grossed out, I don't feel like the rest of the novel has much promise.

Howard Halliday is the editor of the Midnight Examiner, which is a trashy tabloid (I guess that's redundant). It's an absurd story with absurd characters, set against the grimy backdrop of New York City in the 80s. 

This is very male centric humor, so that aspect completely fell flat for me. It definitely gets off to a slow start, I guess it picks up towards the middle, but by then I was completely uninterested in the characters. Next!

RATING: **---

Interesting Facts:

Kotzwinkle wrote the story for Nightmare on Elm Street 4. 

UP NEXT: The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien

666. The Fan Man

The Fan Man
William Kotzwinkle
1974
Around 190 pages

I was hoping our Satanic entry would be a bit more impressive. Instead we get another comic novel that falls flat. Oh well, at least it was short.

Our protagonist is named Horse Badorties, and I'm already tired. He likes fans and is putting together a benefit concert featuring teenage girls. Honestly, I would watch it if it was a Bravo show, but I wasn't that interested in the prose. The lowlight for me was definitely a chapter when Horse says the word "dorky" approximately 15000 times. 

In another writer's hands, I might have been much more sympathetic to Horse as a character, but the humor here didn't land for me. Whatever the goal, repeating the same phrase thousands of times is obnoxious. Maybe he had a word count to reach and panicked. We've all been there.

Obscure for a reason.

RATING: **---

Interesting Facts:

Kotzwinkle wrote the novelization of E.T.

UP NEXT: Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow