The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon was very well received when it was published in 1991. The Washington Post called it "amazing" and "dazzlingly accomplished"Lipez, Richard. "The Mavericks of Excellent, Idaho." The Washington Post. October 6, 1991. 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."Charyn, Jerome. "For Love of a Green-Eyed Cowboy." The New York Times. September 22, 1991. 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."Harris, Michael. "Fiction." Los Angeles Times. December 15, 1991. 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.
