Review of A Fan's Notes by Frederick Exley

A Fan's Notes by Frederick Exley


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
As much as I thoroughly enjoyed Exley's descent into the crossed worthlessness of his humanity and the humanity of his worthlessness, I feel a little exhausted having witnessed it; like spending an evening with a drunk that starts out jolly well and ends up with you imprisoned in the sphere of their failed control, wanting to just go home.

Honestly, for most of the book, I wasn't even sure what was going on, but I got a sense that the Truth was happening, which is a sensation I remember happening nightly when I used to drink too much. Unlike me and the protagonist of most every drunken loser epic, though, Exley's Exley is self-aware, so much so that he (Exely the author) did not even feign the distance of writing a book of fiction about someone else.

This might be a book about football, particularly about loving football, micro-particularly about idolizing Frank Gifford. I wonder if Frank Gifford ever read this book, or did Kathy Lee, or even better, did Regis Philbin, having been longtime co-host with the prize wife of the book's central idol? I think an audiobook should be made with Regis' mad voice maddeningly voicing the Everymadman sucking up all the air in this book. But it is not that at all. A Fan's Notes is a man poured so deeply into his own book that he stains the pages, gets them so wet that they stick together and as a bonus, Exley the writer or Exley the written (whichever) is funny as hell.

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