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BOOK REVIEW


A Fan’s Notes – Exley’s A Fan’s Notes was first


Frederick Exley (Vintage) The title alludes to Exley’s love


published in 1968 to critical acclaim. A “fictional memoir”, as termed by its author, the book is by turns harrowing, brutally honest, scathingly funny, disturbing, revealing, poignant, pathetic, horrific, illuminating and ultimately, modestly triumphant. And that’s only a start. What Exley does is turn the


BILL MACPHERSON Scrambling to come up with


something to meet my deadline I scour the bookshelves. Nothing current fits and then I remember, yes, it’s the vintage issue. Salvation! A quick review of a many times read favourite will fit quite nicely, and I’m off the hook…. well, first I have to write a decent review… but still, I feel saved, redeemed. And trust me, this as a cult classic,


a first novel that conjures as many descriptive adjectives as it has pages. I exaggerate but not by much.


It’s Grilling


spotlight on himself and his life – with its giddy highs and awful lows - doing so with unrelenting honesty and openness. The novel is appropriately sub-titled; while he disclaims full similarity to his own life there is no doubt he writes from the heart - about himself with such utter candor, shamelessness and bare- naked truthfulness that the purging and honesty is in itself moving. No doubt some of the “memoir” is cribbed from other persons and occurrences, but the novel rings true, particularly as Exley exhibits his considerable writing talent in the telling of his life.


of football – in particular his fanatical obsession with the New York Giants – together with his fear of always being on the sidelines, and this is how the novel opens. Exley in his favourite bar, drunk, exhorting, manic for and from the pleasure of the idyllic autumn Sunday afternoon that promises so much. His beloved team on the television, many drinks, a sympathetic bartender, an audience of peers - fellow drinkers and fans. The moment is nirvana. Conveniently ignored/forgotten in


his exultation is his beleaguered life as a barely functioning English teacher at an upstate New York school that is anathema to him, students he can barely abide, a faculty and administration grown cold and callous towards him and his unbecoming behaviour. There is pathos but pain too, and Exley’s descriptiveness of the circumstances he exists under endears him greatly. Things spiral up and down –


excessive drink is a constant throughout,


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