Between the Bars

A Searing Look at Booze, Depression, and the Desire to Be Famous

IT WASN'T until I had finished A Fan's Notes that I surfed over to Wikipedia to check out the entry on its author. What I found there were many similarities between Frederick Exley and the narrator of his fictional memoir. Alcoholism, mental illness, a destructive yearning for the applause of the masses -- Exley is not the only writer to be set on by these demons, but few have written about their attacks with such perception. He empties his soul in A Fan's Notes, offering his reader an unsparing self-examination that is thoughtful, hilarious, and, ultimately, sad without being maudlin. Exley's book is a gift to the would-be writer, a cautionary tale of the danger of writing to please others. The book's timeline meanders along from his boyhood to the time of his putting words to paper; the bulk of it, though, is set against the backdrop of Exley's love of a football team, the New York Giants of the late 1950s into '60s, and his admiration for a player, Frank Gifford (yes, that Frank Gifford), whose talent and achievements garner him the kind of mass approval that Exley can only dream of. While Exley (the character, as well as, presumably, the author) skitters from job to job, from career to career, from institutionalization to institutionalization, all the while soaked in booze and self-loathing, Gifford is actually doing things. Surely there's some cosmic irony in the fact that when Exley finally did something himself, producing a stunning, whirling novel of piercing insight, it was the critics he wowed, not the book-buying public. I hope that wherever he is in the afterlife right now, Hemingway and Fitzgerald are buying him a drink and telling him how much they loved his book.

Rating: ****1/2 (of 5)

Comments

[Chris Durso]

Fitzgerald would do that, but I think Hemingway would talk to him of, uh, other things.

[Tom Durso]

Oh, my ...