A Fan's Notes [Paperback]

Frederick Exley (Author)

Book Description

Release date: August 12, 1988

This fictional memoir, the first of an autobiographical trilogy, traces a self professed failure's nightmarish decent into the underside of American life and his resurrection to the wisdom that emerges from despair.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Frederick Exley recounts his life as the son of a hero-worshipped high school athlete who is doomed to be a spectator not only of sports, but of life. From irresponsible drifter, to dreamer of impossible dreams, to drunkard, to frequent patient at an insane asylum, Exley carried baggage from his childhood through much of his adult life, never feeling he could escape the dark cloud of expectation that hung over him. When Frank Gifford, former New York Giants backfield star, is injured, Exley is jolted into painful realizations about his life, and a confession.

Review

Mr. Exley is a very good writer . . . there's a lot of wit and bravado in this book, but it's more painful than funny. -- The Nation

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Product Details

• Paperback: 385 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (August 12, 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679720766
• ISBN-13: 978-0679720768
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.8 x 7.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (82 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #135,438 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

150 of 155 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Frank Gifford and the Meaning of Life March 31, 2001

By Paul McGrath

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

A buddy of mine used to give a Christmas party every year that everyone eagerly looked forward to. The reason was that he, more than anyone else, would get outrageously drunk. Standing next to the keg in the garage, tipping back and forth, he would insult everyone who came near him in the vilest, most obscene terms. The rest of us stood out there laughing until our bellies hurt. The beauty of these parties was that the host's getting crazy allowed everyone else to feel a little freer to cut loose themselves. The parties ended up getting very wild and were huge fun.

I thought of this while reading A Fan's Notes, not just because the author is an unabashed, morbid alcoholic (although he is), but because he is so many other horrible things as well. In and out of insane asylums; watching soap-operas for days on end while lying on his mother's davenport, eating oreos and masturbating; tormenting his father-in-law; abandoning his wife--that this loser, this crawling degenerate, was able to put together this magnificent, hilarious, scathing piece of literature . . . well, it should give even the most unworthy of us hope that we might be able to do the same. No matter how drunk you got at the Christmas party, the host was always drunker. No matter how irrelevant you may think your life is, Mr. Exley's was way more so.

It is a fictionalized memoir, which means that basically he wrote about his life and gave himself the liberty to stretch things here and there. Don't look for a straight-forward, page-turning, sequenced plot here. It is the kind of a book where the author starts to talk about something, which reminds him of something else, which then requires him to go into a lengthy background explanation. He starts his story in the New Parrot Lounge in Watertown, New York, watching the New York Giants on TV. It isn't until page 365--twenty pages before the end of the book--that he finally gets back to this thread. But if you understand this to begin with--that you're not going into some pot-boiler--and allow yourself to be patient, you will be in for a thrilling, profound, and hugely entertaining read.

His tale begins with the story of his complex relationship with his father, a football star himself, whom young Exley adored. But his confusion and his his father's apparent dislke of him is never resolved, as his father dies at age 40. From there it's college, and drinking, and home, and drinking, and work, and drinking, and a couple of failed relationships, and drinking, the davenport, and then in and out of the insane asylum three times. His observations throughout all of this are sharp, intelligent, and often wildly funny. He drinks, he says, because he cannot tolerate the clarity of constant sobriety. He fails, he says, because he does not fit in contemporary America. He doesn't like or understand it. Indeed, he loathes it, and in truth, there is much to loathe. Films, television, omnipresent mendacity, pseudo-intellectuals; his observations are a scathing indictment of our often petty, trivial, close-minded society.

But "it," America, cannot abide him either, and when he tries to hide from it he is institutionalized. His accounts of this experience, and the electro-shock treatments and insulin therapy he is administered there, are as searing as anything I have ever read on the subject. We come to understand that these well-intentioned but ultimately sadistic treatments, rather than cure one, instead simply cow one into submission.

The central metaphor of this book is that his life, in a very odd way, is tied to the football New York Giants of the late fifties and early sixties, and especially to Frank Gifford, a Giant, and Exley's contemporary. While everything else in his life is going out of control, his handle on reality is this team, and their star flanker. Indeed, he attended USC when Gifford was there, and moved back to New York at the same time Gifford became a Giant. He admires them; their quality is the one thing he can understand with lucidity. And it is Gifford's season-ending injury, suffered at the hands of Chuck Bednarik in 1960 (an event which every person claiming to be a football fan ought to know about), which shocks him into an understanding of his own mortality. He finally realizes that there is only a finite amount of time to waste being a drunk.

As I mentioned, the book is often wildly humorous, but at the same time it can be very powerful. It is difficult to quote from because the style simply does not lend itself to one-liners or sound-bites, but I will give it a try. Bumpy, his brother-in-law, initially comes across as a clown, a drunk, and an obnoxious buffoon. We laugh and laugh at Exley's description of his barroom forays and his filthy apartment. And then: "Beneath his wooden jollity, Bumpy was consuming himself with hate; and for one so seemingly self-conscious, so oppressivley inward, so apparently aware of nothing outside his own filthy tongue, Bumpy had an acute, nearly pathological insight into the temperature of those about him." Pow! Our little Bumpy is quite a bit more complex than we imagined.

Exley is unsparingly honest, describing his often disgraceful behaviour in the most lurid terms, and between that which he does and that which is done to him this book--despite its glaring intelligence--could have easily sunk into wallowing self-pity. But it never does, and that, I think, is why it emerges triumphant. It is a book written with wry bemusement and self-deprecating humor, and by one who, despite everything, has made the astonishing discovery that he likes himself. This book is a real original. A superior achievement.

29 of 32 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars More relevant than ever May 5, 2000

By George Grella VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

In these ridiculous 'dot.com' times, when the making of money has somehow assumed a hip cachet among the young, this fantastic novel is more important than ever. Exley's struggle to simply live, get by, in a family, society and world in which he feels like such a stranger, in which his values alienate him from peers and colleagues, is fascinating, funny and painful. The narrative is simply gripping, and there is never the sentimental solace of 'lessons learned' or personal transformation. This is one man's view of himself and the world, a view never seen on TV, in the movies, or heard on the radio. And his voice is needed more than ever. Hopefully, this book will be kept in print perpetually.

21 of 23 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Now THIS is a good book!! January 30, 2003

By David Burks

Format:Paperback

A Fan's Notes is one of the best books I have ever read. This guy is amazing. Keep a dictionary handy--it's well worth it. Some say this book is more sad than funny. I disagree wholeheartedly. A conventional life is what's sad. Mr. Exley-- drunken sot or not, is beyond eloquent. The writing is beautiful and the story is thought provoking. When I read the last sentence I felt a tangle of strong emotions that I still have not, nor do I care to, unravel. Thank God for people like Frederick Exley. Get rid of what you think you know about living a successful life and just enjoy.