The Man Who Fell In Love With The Moon
Encyclopedia
The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon is a 1991
novel
by American
author Tom Spanbauer
set at the beginning of the 20th century. Told primarily in flashback
by its protagonist
, a half-breed
Native American
named Out-There-In-The-Shed ("Shed" for short), most of the action occurs in the late 19th century in the fictional town of Excellent, Idaho
, as Shed grows up, learns about his parents, and falls in love. The work is Spanbauer's second novel.
and alcoholic
who lives in the fictional town of Excellent, Idaho, in the middle part of the 20th century. Ridiculed by the white townspeople, Shed reminisces about his life and what led him to be a cross-dresser and a drunk.
In flashback, Shed reveals that in the 1880s he lived with his mother, a Shoshone Indian, and that his mother worked as a maid, laundress, and prostitute for no-nonsense but tender-hearted madam
Ida Richilieu at Richilieu's hotel and brothel. The two live in a shed in the rear of Ida's place. Although Shed's mother will not speak about his father, Shed believes his father was a mentally ill cowboy named Billy Blizzard (who had been sexually involved with Shed's mother since Blizzard was 13 years old). Blizzard goes insane, raping the teenaged Shed. Shed's mother tries to hunt down her son's rapist, but Blizzard kills her. Ida Richilieu takes Shed on, so long as Shed acts as a bisexual
prostitute for Richilieu's customers. Shed agrees.
After a few years, Shed decides to discover more about his father and heritage. He leaves Excellent and tries to find his mother's tribe. On the way there, he meets Dellwood Barker, a Montana
cowboy who introduces Shed to a variety of spiritual and mystical traditions. The two begin a homosexual relationship. After finding a photograph of his mother among Barker's possessions, Shed comes to believe that Barker is his father. Barker soon sends Shed on his way to the Shoshone tribe, not wishing to hinder Shed in his quest. Shed finds his mother's tribe living on a reservation, and meets the Shoshone medicine man
, Owlfeather. Shed learns the true meaning of his name, but shortly thereafter is shot by Owlfeather's son, Charles Smith. Smith commits suicide moments later, and Owlfeather breathes life back into Shed (dying in the process).
After recovering, Shed finds Barker again and the two return to Excellent. A new and beautiful prostitute, the widow Alma Hatch, has joined the brothel, and the four individuals form a tightly-bonded group that share living quarters and sexual experiences. But the town has changed as a number of Mormon
s have moved to Excellent, and the town's libertine
ways are going away. After some time, the four African American
Wisdom brothers (Homer, Blind Jude, Ulysses, and Virgil) arrive in Excellent. Disagreement between the Mormon settlers and Ida Richilieu and her friends breaks out and descends into arson (the brothel is burned down, killing several of their friends) and murder (the four Wisdom brothers are killed). In the period after this tragedy, Ida Richilieu, Dellwood Barker, Alma Hatch, and Shed try to break out of their depression by consuming all the opium and alcohol they can get their hands on. In a haze, Ida Richilieu and Alma Hatch attempt to go over nearby Devil's Pass in a blizzard, but their wagon overturns on a steep hill. Alma dies, and Ida's legs are frozen up to the knees. Dellwood Barker and Shed go after the women. They rescue Ida, but Shed and Dellwood are forced to amputate her legs to save her life. Dellwood Barker goes insane from the shock surrounding this rapid turn of events, and leaves Excellent to die. The Mormons now hold Excellent in their grasp. Shed learns more about his heritage, but the world he knew is gone.
The book concludes with the elderly Shed reflecting on how little has changed in Excellent since the death of Alma Hatch, and how the white people of Excellent are not in touch with their true selves.
After graduating from Idaho State University
in 1969 with a bachelor's degree
and then spending two years as a Peace Corps
volunteer in Kenya
, Spanbauer married and returned to Idaho where he obtained a job at his alma mater
as a counselor and advisor to the student Indian Club. He met and became involved with Clyde Hall, a two-spirit
(and later a tribal elder) Shoshone-Métis. Three months later, the two became blood brother
s. Hall had a deep influence on Spanbauer that directly led to the writing of The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon:
Spanbauer moved to New York City
permanent in 1983 and entered the Columbia University Writing Program
. Spanbauer took a job as an apartment building supervisor in the East Village
, and began abusing alcohol and taking cocaine
. He began writing The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon in 1987, and by 1988 was deep into the manuscript. The writing process was a very difficult one for Spanbauer. He had so little money that he lived like "a subway rat, pale and frail, trying hard to believe in" the novel he was writing. He later said, "A lot of the stuff I came up with was pretty fearsome, facing some personal devils head-on. I couldn't distinguish between the world and the book. At one point, I was so stressed out, I passed out in Penn Station
." As he told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer
after the book's publication, "It's all a matter of trust. You're right in the middle of this story. You don't know the end of it. It's this preposterous tale about these preposterous people, and you don't know what's going to happen next, and you're tired of eating chicken livers and fettuccine, and you're alone in this little square concrete apartment, there's no air or earth, and pretty soon it was hard for me to distinguish what was going on in my head and what was going on on the outside." The book took four and a half years and seven revisions to complete.
In one memorable sequence in the book, the cowboy drifter (and both men believe, Shed's father), Dellwood Barker, has homosexual anal intercourse with Shed and teaches Shed about the "Wild Moon Man"—an anthropomorphic
representation of neotantric sex
and expanded orgasm
. According to Spanbauer, the idea for the Wild Moon Man came out of his own imagination:
Completing the manuscript did not occur until early 1991 and left Spanbauer emotionally and physically exhausted, so he moved to Oregon
to recuperate.
, a student of Spanbauer's, has explained: "Story can be a succession of tasty, smelly, touchable details. What Tom Spanbauer and Gordon Lish call 'going on the body,' to give the reader a sympathetic physical reaction, to involve the reader on a gut level."
Critics have also observed elements of magic realism
in the novel.
called it "amazing" and "dazzlingly accomplished" and The Oregonian
said the novel "boldly creates a new voice from the Old West." The New York Times
was equally effusive: "The miracle of the novel is that it obliges us to rethink our whole idea of narration and history and myth." The Los Angeles Times
found it "brave, original, ribald, funny,[and] heart-rending" and concluded that the book is "as bright as it is dark, full of fictional and philosophical pleasures, a quirky, unsettling look at American history and a vision quest in the grand old tradition." The book's extensive cast of quirky characters was singled out by several reviewers. The Washington Post said the characters were "winningly rebellious...brimming with life", while the Seattle Post-Intelligencer said "Spanbauer has populated his pages with characters so colorfully drawn they practically pop off the page and start dancing, egged on by mass consumption of whiskey, locoweed and opium stardust." Reviewers compared Spanbauer to Mark Twain
, D. H. Lawrence
, Gabriel García Márquez
, Garrison Keillor
, Thomas Berger, Walt Whitman
, William H. Gass
, Molly Gloss
, and Russell Hoban
.
The novel received some critical comments as well. The Oregonian's reviewer thought the characters were too "extreme," felt that the narrative took too long to get going, and concluded that Shed's method of communicating in sentence fragments (often missing a verb
or subject
) difficult to comprehend. Nevertheless, while these elements were "irritating", the reviewer concluded: "[T]he exasperation is worth it: There is something triumphant about a novelist who risks this much and manages to find his way home." The same reviewer also found that some passages might make some readers queasy: "Spanbauer's book, his second novel, is not for the squeamish (or Mormons without a sense of humor). The descriptions of love-making and violence done to the flesh are pretty graphic. Shed is a clear-eyed, unflinching observer, after all; and if someone is going to have her legs amputated, Shed is going to report the dismembering in detail. That makes sense in terms of the character, but it can be heavy going for the sensitive." The Los Angeles Times critic noticed a resemblance between Spanbauer's novel and other novels from several years earlier which attempted to shock with sex and violence, and wondered whether the novel was "irresponsible" in the age of AIDS
.
Despite the generally excellent reviews, by 1999 the Chicago Tribune had called the novel "unjustly obscure". The Los Angeles Times felt the book fell short of "cult
" status because it came 20 years too late to be part of the free love
and gay liberation
movements.
The book's status, and Spanbauer's reputation has an author, have both risen rapidly in the last 10 years. One reviewer noted that "Spanbauer made his mark" as an author with the novel. Robert Walter, director of the Joseph Campbell Foundation
, quoted a portion of the novel as some of the best American writing in 1993. By 2001, the novel had reached "cult" status. One journalist called the work "an acknowledged minor classic".
The book made two "best of" lists since it was published. In 1999, the Boston Phoenix
announced it was the 88th best LGBTQ
novel of the 20th century. An organizer for the United Kingdom
's Big Gay Read, a follow-up to The Big Read, noted that The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon was the one book that should be added to the first-cut list.
, a prize sponsored by the American Library Association
and the oldest LGBT book award in the United States. The book won the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award
.
1991 in literature
The year 1991 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*Douglas Coupland publishes the novel Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture, popularizing the term Generation X as the name of the generation....
novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
by American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
author Tom Spanbauer
Tom Spanbauer
-Biography:He studied creative writing with Gordon Lish at Columbia University. As a gay writer, he has explored issues of race, of sexual identity, of how we make a family for ourselves in order to surmount the limitations of the families into which we are born...
set at the beginning of the 20th century. Told primarily in flashback
Flashback (narrative)
Flashback is an interjected scene that takes the narrative back in time from the current point the story has reached. Flashbacks are often used to recount events that happened before the story’s primary sequence of events or to fill in crucial backstory...
by its protagonist
Protagonist
A protagonist is the main character of a literary, theatrical, cinematic, or musical narrative, around whom the events of the narrative's plot revolve and with whom the audience is intended to most identify...
, a half-breed
Half-breed
Half-breed is an historic term used to describe anyone who is mixed Native American and white European parentage...
Native American
Native Americans in the United States
Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...
named Out-There-In-The-Shed ("Shed" for short), most of the action occurs in the late 19th century in the fictional town of Excellent, Idaho
Idaho
Idaho is a state in the Rocky Mountain area of the United States. The state's largest city and capital is Boise. Residents are called "Idahoans". Idaho was admitted to the Union on July 3, 1890, as the 43rd state....
, as Shed grows up, learns about his parents, and falls in love. The work is Spanbauer's second novel.
Plot synopsis
Duivichi-un-Dua, also known as Out-in-the-Shed or just "Shed", is an elderly transvestiteTransvestism
Transvestism is the practice of cross-dressing, which is wearing clothing traditionally associated with the opposite sex. Transvestite refers to a person who cross-dresses; however, the word often has additional connotations. -History:Although the word transvestism was coined as late as the 1910s,...
and alcoholic
Alcoholism
Alcoholism is a broad term for problems with alcohol, and is generally used to mean compulsive and uncontrolled consumption of alcoholic beverages, usually to the detriment of the drinker's health, personal relationships, and social standing...
who lives in the fictional town of Excellent, Idaho, in the middle part of the 20th century. Ridiculed by the white townspeople, Shed reminisces about his life and what led him to be a cross-dresser and a drunk.
In flashback, Shed reveals that in the 1880s he lived with his mother, a Shoshone Indian, and that his mother worked as a maid, laundress, and prostitute for no-nonsense but tender-hearted madam
Pimp
A pimp is an agent for prostitutes who collects part of their earnings. The pimp may receive this money in return for advertising services, physical protection, or for providing a location where she may engage clients...
Ida Richilieu at Richilieu's hotel and brothel. The two live in a shed in the rear of Ida's place. Although Shed's mother will not speak about his father, Shed believes his father was a mentally ill cowboy named Billy Blizzard (who had been sexually involved with Shed's mother since Blizzard was 13 years old). Blizzard goes insane, raping the teenaged Shed. Shed's mother tries to hunt down her son's rapist, but Blizzard kills her. Ida Richilieu takes Shed on, so long as Shed acts as a bisexual
Bisexuality
Bisexuality is sexual behavior or an orientation involving physical or romantic attraction to both males and females, especially with regard to men and women. It is one of the three main classifications of sexual orientation, along with a heterosexual and a homosexual orientation, all a part of the...
prostitute for Richilieu's customers. Shed agrees.
After a few years, Shed decides to discover more about his father and heritage. He leaves Excellent and tries to find his mother's tribe. On the way there, he meets Dellwood Barker, a Montana
Montana
Montana is a state in the Western United States. The western third of Montana contains numerous mountain ranges. Smaller, "island ranges" are found in the central third of the state, for a total of 77 named ranges of the Rocky Mountains. This geographical fact is reflected in the state's name,...
cowboy who introduces Shed to a variety of spiritual and mystical traditions. The two begin a homosexual relationship. After finding a photograph of his mother among Barker's possessions, Shed comes to believe that Barker is his father. Barker soon sends Shed on his way to the Shoshone tribe, not wishing to hinder Shed in his quest. Shed finds his mother's tribe living on a reservation, and meets the Shoshone medicine man
Medicine man
"Medicine man" or "Medicine woman" are English terms used to describe traditional healers and spiritual leaders among Native American and other indigenous or aboriginal peoples...
, Owlfeather. Shed learns the true meaning of his name, but shortly thereafter is shot by Owlfeather's son, Charles Smith. Smith commits suicide moments later, and Owlfeather breathes life back into Shed (dying in the process).
After recovering, Shed finds Barker again and the two return to Excellent. A new and beautiful prostitute, the widow Alma Hatch, has joined the brothel, and the four individuals form a tightly-bonded group that share living quarters and sexual experiences. But the town has changed as a number of Mormon
Mormon
The term Mormon most commonly denotes an adherent, practitioner, follower, or constituent of Mormonism, which is the largest branch of the Latter Day Saint movement in restorationist Christianity...
s have moved to Excellent, and the town's libertine
Libertine
A libertine is one devoid of most moral restraints, which are seen as unnecessary or undesirable, especially one who ignores or even spurns accepted morals and forms of behavior sanctified by the larger society. Libertines, also known as rakes, placed value on physical pleasures, meaning those...
ways are going away. After some time, the four African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
Wisdom brothers (Homer, Blind Jude, Ulysses, and Virgil) arrive in Excellent. Disagreement between the Mormon settlers and Ida Richilieu and her friends breaks out and descends into arson (the brothel is burned down, killing several of their friends) and murder (the four Wisdom brothers are killed). In the period after this tragedy, Ida Richilieu, Dellwood Barker, Alma Hatch, and Shed try to break out of their depression by consuming all the opium and alcohol they can get their hands on. In a haze, Ida Richilieu and Alma Hatch attempt to go over nearby Devil's Pass in a blizzard, but their wagon overturns on a steep hill. Alma dies, and Ida's legs are frozen up to the knees. Dellwood Barker and Shed go after the women. They rescue Ida, but Shed and Dellwood are forced to amputate her legs to save her life. Dellwood Barker goes insane from the shock surrounding this rapid turn of events, and leaves Excellent to die. The Mormons now hold Excellent in their grasp. Shed learns more about his heritage, but the world he knew is gone.
The book concludes with the elderly Shed reflecting on how little has changed in Excellent since the death of Alma Hatch, and how the white people of Excellent are not in touch with their true selves.
Writing the novel
Author Tom Spanbauer was born in Idaho and raised on a farm there, and Spanbauer drew heavily on his upbringing for settings in the book.After graduating from Idaho State University
Idaho State University
Idaho State University is a public university located in Pocatello, Idaho. It has outreach programs in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho Falls, Boise, and Twin Falls....
in 1969 with a bachelor's degree
Bachelor's degree
A bachelor's degree is usually an academic degree awarded for an undergraduate course or major that generally lasts for three or four years, but can range anywhere from two to six years depending on the region of the world...
and then spending two years as a Peace Corps
Peace Corps
The Peace Corps is an American volunteer program run by the United States Government, as well as a government agency of the same name. The mission of the Peace Corps includes three goals: providing technical assistance, helping people outside the United States to understand US culture, and helping...
volunteer in Kenya
Kenya
Kenya , officially known as the Republic of Kenya, is a country in East Africa that lies on the equator, with the Indian Ocean to its south-east...
, Spanbauer married and returned to Idaho where he obtained a job at his alma mater
Alma mater
Alma mater , pronounced ), was used in ancient Rome as a title for various mother goddesses, especially Ceres or Cybele, and in Christianity for the Virgin Mary.-General term:...
as a counselor and advisor to the student Indian Club. He met and became involved with Clyde Hall, a two-spirit
Two-Spirit
Two-Spirit People , is an English term that emerged in 1990 out of the third annual inter-tribal Native American/First Nations gay/lesbian American conference in Winnipeg. It describes Indigenous North Americans who fulfill one of many mixed gender roles found traditionally among many Native...
(and later a tribal elder) Shoshone-Métis. Three months later, the two became blood brother
Blood brother
Blood brother can refer to one of two things: two males related by birth, or two or more men not related by birth who have sworn loyalty to each other. This is usually done in a ceremony, known as a blood oath, where the blood of each man is mingled together...
s. Hall had a deep influence on Spanbauer that directly led to the writing of The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon:
Spanbauer moved to 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...
permanent in 1983 and entered the Columbia University Writing Program
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
. Spanbauer took a job as an apartment building supervisor in the East Village
East Village, Manhattan
The East Village is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, lying east of Greenwich Village, south of Gramercy and Stuyvesant Town, and north of the Lower East Side...
, and began abusing alcohol and taking cocaine
Cocaine
Cocaine is a crystalline tropane alkaloid that is obtained from the leaves of the coca plant. The name comes from "coca" in addition to the alkaloid suffix -ine, forming cocaine. It is a stimulant of the central nervous system, an appetite suppressant, and a topical anesthetic...
. He began writing The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon in 1987, and by 1988 was deep into the manuscript. The writing process was a very difficult one for Spanbauer. He had so little money that he lived like "a subway rat, pale and frail, trying hard to believe in" the novel he was writing. He later said, "A lot of the stuff I came up with was pretty fearsome, facing some personal devils head-on. I couldn't distinguish between the world and the book. At one point, I was so stressed out, I passed out in Penn Station
Pennsylvania Station (New York City)
Pennsylvania Station—commonly known as Penn Station—is the major intercity train station and a major commuter rail hub in New York City. It is one of the busiest rail stations in the world, and a hub for inbound and outbound railroad traffic in New York City. The New York City Subway system also...
." As he told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is an online newspaper and former print newspaper covering Seattle, Washington, United States, and the surrounding metropolitan area...
after the book's publication, "It's all a matter of trust. You're right in the middle of this story. You don't know the end of it. It's this preposterous tale about these preposterous people, and you don't know what's going to happen next, and you're tired of eating chicken livers and fettuccine, and you're alone in this little square concrete apartment, there's no air or earth, and pretty soon it was hard for me to distinguish what was going on in my head and what was going on on the outside." The book took four and a half years and seven revisions to complete.
In one memorable sequence in the book, the cowboy drifter (and both men believe, Shed's father), Dellwood Barker, has homosexual anal intercourse with Shed and teaches Shed about the "Wild Moon Man"—an anthropomorphic
Anthropomorphism
Anthropomorphism is any attribution of human characteristics to animals, non-living things, phenomena, material states, objects or abstract concepts, such as organizations, governments, spirits or deities. The term was coined in the mid 1700s...
representation of neotantric sex
Neotantra
Neotantra, or Tantric sex, is a term used for the modern, western variations of Tantra. The term refers to both the New Age and modern Western interpretations of traditional Indian and Buddhist tantra...
and expanded orgasm
Expanded orgasm
Expanded orgasm is any sexual experience more intense and extensive than what can be described as, or included in the definition of, an ordinary orgasm. It includes a range of sensations that include orgasms that are full-bodied, and orgasms that last from a few minutes to many hours. The term was...
. According to Spanbauer, the idea for the Wild Moon Man came out of his own imagination:
Completing the manuscript did not occur until early 1991 and left Spanbauer emotionally and physically exhausted, so he moved to Oregon
Oregon
Oregon is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is located on the Pacific coast, with Washington to the north, California to the south, Nevada on the southeast and Idaho to the east. The Columbia and Snake rivers delineate much of Oregon's northern and eastern...
to recuperate.
Style
The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon is a book in the "dangerous writing" style of fiction actively promoted by author Tom Spanbauer. According to Spanbauer, this is a style of writing which is deeply personal and which directly addresses issues difficult to confront for the author. He explains: "Dangerous writing means putting a piece of yourself in a work, going to the 'sore spot,' and discussing taboo topics, particularly sex and violence. It means writing for yourself, a concept that in the literary world was thought to make you go broke. It means exposing yourself to the tiger, not physically, but mentally." The book also features a writing style Spanbauer calls "going on the body". As author Chuck PalahniukChuck Palahniuk
Charles Michael "Chuck" Palahniuk is an American transgressional fiction novelist and freelance journalist. He is best known for the award-winning novel Fight Club, which was later made into a film directed by David Fincher and starring Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, and Helena Bonham Carter...
, a student of Spanbauer's, has explained: "Story can be a succession of tasty, smelly, touchable details. What Tom Spanbauer and Gordon Lish call 'going on the body,' to give the reader a sympathetic physical reaction, to involve the reader on a gut level."
Critics have also observed elements of magic realism
Magic realism
Magic realism or magical realism is an aesthetic style or genre of fiction in which magical elements blend with the real world. The story explains these magical elements as real occurrences, presented in a straightforward manner that places the "real" and the "fantastic" in the same stream of...
in the novel.
Critical reception
The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon was very well-received when it was published in 1991. The Washington PostThe Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
called it "amazing" and "dazzlingly accomplished" and The Oregonian
The Oregonian
The Oregonian is the major daily newspaper in Portland, Oregon, owned by Advance Publications. It is the oldest continuously published newspaper on the U.S. west coast, founded as a weekly by Thomas J. Dryer on December 4, 1850...
said the novel "boldly creates a new voice from the Old West." The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
was equally effusive: "The miracle of the novel is that it obliges us to rethink our whole idea of narration and history and myth." The Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
found it "brave, original, ribald, funny,
Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens , better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist...
, D. H. Lawrence
D. H. Lawrence
David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation...
, Gabriel García Márquez
Gabriel García Márquez
Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez is a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist, known affectionately as Gabo throughout Latin America. He is considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th century. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in...
, Garrison Keillor
Garrison Keillor
Gary Edward "Garrison" Keillor is an American author, storyteller, humorist, and radio personality. He is known as host of the Minnesota Public Radio show A Prairie Home Companion Gary Edward "Garrison" Keillor (born August 7, 1942) is an American author, storyteller, humorist, and radio...
, Thomas Berger, Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman
Walter "Walt" Whitman was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse...
, William H. Gass
William H. Gass
William Howard Gass is an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, critic, and former philosophy professor. He has written two novels, three collections of short stories, a collection of novellas, and seven volumes of essays, three of which have won National Book Critics Circle Award...
, Molly Gloss
Molly Gloss
Molly Gloss is an American writer currently best known for historical fiction and science fiction.-Life:Molly Gloss grew up in rural Oregon and began writing seriously when she became a mother. She now lives in Portland, Oregon and is close friends with fellow science fiction writer Ursula K. Le...
, and Russell Hoban
Russell Hoban
Russell Conwell Hoban is an American writer, now living in England, of fantasy, science fiction, mainstream fiction, magic realism, poetry, and children's books-Biography:...
.
The novel received some critical comments as well. The Oregonian's reviewer thought the characters were too "extreme," felt that the narrative took too long to get going, and concluded that Shed's method of communicating in sentence fragments (often missing a verb
Verb
A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...
or subject
Subject (grammar)
The subject is one of the two main constituents of a clause, according to a tradition that can be tracked back to Aristotle and that is associated with phrase structure grammars; the other constituent is the predicate. According to another tradition, i.e...
) difficult to comprehend. Nevertheless, while these elements were "irritating", the reviewer concluded: "
AIDS
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...
.
Despite the generally excellent reviews, by 1999 the Chicago Tribune had called the novel "unjustly obscure". The Los Angeles Times felt the book fell short of "cult
Cult following
A cult following is a group of fans who are highly dedicated to a specific area of pop culture. A film, book, band, or video game, among other things, will be said to have a cult following when it has a small but very passionate fan base...
" status because it came 20 years too late to be part of the free love
Free love
The term free love has been used to describe a social movement that rejects marriage, which is seen as a form of social bondage. The Free Love movement’s initial goal was to separate the state from sexual matters such as marriage, birth control, and adultery...
and gay liberation
Gay Liberation
Gay liberation is the name used to describe the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender movement of the late 1960s and early to mid 1970s in North America, Western Europe, and Australia and New Zealand...
movements.
The book's status, and Spanbauer's reputation has an author, have both risen rapidly in the last 10 years. One reviewer noted that "Spanbauer made his mark" as an author with the novel. Robert Walter, director of the Joseph Campbell Foundation
Joseph Campbell Foundation
The Joseph Campbell Foundation is a US not-for-profit organization dedicated to preserve, protect and perpetuate the work of influential American mythologist Joseph Campbell...
, quoted a portion of the novel as some of the best American writing in 1993. By 2001, the novel had reached "cult" status. One journalist called the work "an acknowledged minor classic".
The book made two "best of" lists since it was published. In 1999, the Boston Phoenix
The Phoenix (newspaper)
The Phoenix is the name of several alternative weekly newspapers published in the United States by Phoenix Media/Communications Group of Boston, Massachusetts including the Boston Phoenix, the Providence Phoenix, the Portland Phoenix and the now-defunct Worcester Phoenix...
announced it was the 88th best LGBTQ
LGBT
LGBT is an initialism that collectively refers to "lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender" people. In use since the 1990s, the term "LGBT" is an adaptation of the initialism "LGB", which itself started replacing the phrase "gay community" beginning in the mid-to-late 1980s, which many within the...
novel of the 20th century. An organizer for the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
's Big Gay Read, a follow-up to The Big Read, noted that The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon was the one book that should be added to the first-cut list.
Awards
The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon was a finalist for the 1992 Stonewall Book AwardStonewall Book Award
Sponsored by the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Round Table of the American Library Association , the Stonewall Book Award is for LGBT books...
, a prize sponsored by the American Library Association
American Library Association
The American Library Association is a non-profit organization based in the United States that promotes libraries and library education internationally. It is the oldest and largest library association in the world, with more than 62,000 members....
and the oldest LGBT book award in the United States. The book won the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award
Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award
Since 1965, the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association, or PNBA, has presented annual awards to recognize excellence in writing from the American Pacific Northwest...
.