Rating: 
Summary: Brilliant
Review: "A Fan's notes" is a blistering, literate critique of the emptiness of the illusory 'American Dream' told through the eyes of one who longed for, yet at the same time recognized the futility of it as defined by society at large. He cuts through the veneer and exposes the rotten underpinnings of a value system based solely on what trappings one manages to acquire during one's lifetime. It is an analysis that could only be performed by someone on the outside looking in.
It seems the negative reviews of this book focused on the fact that Exley was a drunkard and a louse while missing the point of the book entirely. There is no place in society for a man such as this, in his mere existence he thumbs his nose at the things most structure the framework of their lives around. Therein lies the value in a seemingly wasted life.
A funny, sometimes harrowing account of American life as seen though the eyes of what just might be the most intelligent man to spend the majority of his life with his ... firmly planted on a barstool.
Rating:
Summary: Frank Gifford and the Meaning of Life
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: You'll Treasure This Amazing Book!
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: You MUST Read this one!
Review: A Fan's Notes is savagely funny and honest, delightfully written, and shockingly blunt in its dissection of mainstream American values. The book is what one might call these days 'memoir,' although in 1968 such a genre wasn't quite clearly recognized, and so people didn't know if the Fred Exley in the book was the 'real' Fred Exley who wrote the book. Suffice it to say that Notes is Exley's chilling, charming telling of his alcoholism, his loves and successes and losses, his madness, and his obsession with football and Frank Gifford, among other things. A parade of grotesques move through this book, representations of men and women who all reflect and refract sets of values that Exley flirts with but ultimately cannot engage with. Rather than play the game of the American Dream, he prefers to remain, for the most part, on the outside, taking notes. This is a one-of-a-kind American Masterpiece. Please read it! Also recommended: Tropic of Cancer by Miller, The Losers' Club by Richard Perez
Rating:
Summary: Exley's "Notes" Ready for Us Life's Horrific Tests
Review: Before the culture of victimology and self-help overtook theAmerican consciousness, we had to rely on literature to getus through the darkest hours. Frederick Exley's "A Fan's Notes" chronicles an excruciating time: the author's post-collegiate forays into the career world, the drinking life, and a permanent and relentless state of self-loathing. Set against the confident and sparkling era of the 1950's and'60s, these "Notes" form a magnificent tale of despair that overturns the rotted underbelly of the times and yet tell a compelling individual story of one man's personal consignment to the non-conformity of unhappiness. Exley, burdened by a family legacy of small-town greatness in the figures of his father and brother, is a narrator distinctly aware of his own lack of size; so aware, in fact, that the writing that springs from that awareness becomes ascendant. Exley battles with a flat career in advertising, a bad marriage, an addiction to sports (in this case, the trials and tribulations of the premiere NFL team of the era, the New York Giants), and near paralyzing bouts of depression and near-madness.The journey into Exley's underworld is painful to endure, but also also oddly pleasurable. The biting wit and keen insight in the work are enertaining and illuminating, and the reader emerges from the book transfixed if not transformed, and with the added benefit of having avoided a 12 step program. A tough story by a brilliant writer who defined angst long before most yuppies even dreamed of analysis.
Rating:
Summary: You'll Treasure This Amazing Book!
Review: Fred Exley's 1968 book, A Fan's Notes, has the unfortunate status of being one of those books that you can go your whole life and never read. This book, Exley's first, was his best, and although it stirred up the literary world when it was released, it has been more overlooked in the wake of Exley's disappointing follow-ups, his personal problems, and his death in 1992. Exley went from being a talented young writer to being an ex-writer. When when he was good, man oh man, he was good. The guy could write. A Fan's Notes is savagely funny and honest, delightfully written, and shockingly blunt in its dissection of mainstream American values. The book is what one might call these days "memoir," although in 1968 such a genre wasn't quite clearly recognized, and so people didn't know if the Fred Exley in the book was the "real" Fred Exley who wrote the book. Not that we should care about such trifles as the facts when compelling literature is at stake. Suffice it to say that Notes is Exley's chilling, charming telling of his alcoholism, his loves and successes and losses, his madness, and his obsession with "winners and losers" in life, among other things. A parade of grotesques move through this book, representations of men and women who all reflect and refract sets of values that Exley flirts with but ultimately cannot engage with. Rather than play the game of the American Dream, he prefers to remain, for the most part, on the outside, taking notes. Even if Exley wrote only one book his whole life, he should have been happy with A Fan's Notes. Anyone who relishes concise, intelligent, entertaining literature should take notes on Notes. It's truly an amazing book, very personal and very memorable. Another quick Amazon pick I'd like to recommend is The Losers Club by Richard Perez
Rating:
Summary: Constant Bedside Reading
Review: Frederick Exley lived a life exemplary of the alcoholic: infantile, irresponsible, and self-loathing. In spite of his self-admitted "nearly heroic" drinking, he manages to compile one of the most honest, self-exploratory works in human history. While technically a novel, "A Fan's Notes" is the life of Exley: his rabid fanhood of football and specifically Frank Gifford; his childlike dependence on others to provide him room and board; a collection of offbeat people that were his acquaintances and family; continuous, suicidal drinking; and his masterful use of the language painting the walls of this classic book. It is nearly impossible to describe "A Fan's Notes" and relay the true sad genius of Exley. It demands to be experienced. Read it and be enriched.
Rating: 
Summary: Masterpiece? Not from an entertainment perspective
Review: I read this book after hearing it referred to as great literature somehow intertwined with the worship of Frank Gifford, the former New York Giant. But this book is really a journey in the dispair of one man's life. Many have talked of this introspective look at living in American society with unrealistic expectations. But this is more about a very troubled man who just happens to be able to brillantly weave sentences. And that's the most amazing story that he could write after the abuse he had done to his body and brain. I read books to be entertained or to learn. This book is not entertaining. In fact, for the first half of the book, it's very depressing. He works for a while as a teacher after time spent at a mental institution and loves Frank Gifford and the Giants. His teaching job is always in jeopardy due to his well known drinking problems. And this guy is not your average drunk. This is a serious drinking problem that negatively effects every friend and family member through his life. After a second round at the mental institution, the author makes his way to Chicago and leads a fairly normal life with a quality job, friends, bars to drink in and girls to date. At this point in the book I was so relieved to see the guy have some happiness, the book became enjoyable. Particularly as he describes his deepest relationship and the irony of its ending. Upon a return to New York state, he marries a normal wealthy girl and describes in detail the weekends spent with her sister's family and the unique relationship he builds with his eccentric brother-in-law. These relationships all start to end badly as his wife becomes pregnant and his drinking eventually sends him back to the mental institution. Only at the end does he realize that his children who he initially didn't care for are the most important part of his life. Of course, by then every meaningful relationship is destroyed. While I didn't care for the story, it is easy to become mesmerized by some of his descriptions and sentence structure. Would I recommend this book to someone? Not if they want to be entertained. But there is something to learn here. But the time spent to learn the lesson may not be warranted. Great literature? Not by my judgement.
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Summary: Three Decades Later, Exley's Notes Strike Necessary Chords
Review: Long before the self-help and men's movements, writers like Frederick Exley told honest and epic tales of sound and fury that came from their own experiences. Exley's 1968 groundbreaking novel "A Fan's Notes" is one such work, a novel of biographical fiction whose power has only grown with time and whose addition to the Modern Library is entirely fitting. The story frames the author's young life, from his adolescence in upstate New York to his post-collegiate wanderings in New York City. The tale is not a happy one, full as it is of depression, alcoholism, and perhaps the worst of Exley's maladies, hero-worship -- for his father, a smalltown football legend, his war-hero brother, and his Southern Cal classmate and New York Giant Frank Gifford. Like Salieri in "Amadeus," Exley's narrative voice in "A Fan's Notes" is distinctly aware of its failures beside the greatness around it, and that painful awareness makes the story a masochist's paradise that the reader spirals through. The journey takes us through Exley's uninspired youth of inebriated musing, aimless existence, and half-hearted attempts at careerism, showing us all the while his ill-timed punches at life's shadows.In the end, we and he somehow emerge alive but armored for future struggles with bitter wisdom, in no small measure due to the power of power of Exley's extensive prose. Perhaps because we no longer think it fashionable to judge such men kindly or with a respect for their complex foibles,"A Fan's Notes," after nearly 30 years in print, serves in our time as a harsh but needed reminder of the ongoing struggle of the artist to be true to himself and his work, even when he has no apparent love for either.
Rating:
Summary: One of a kind
Review: There are a number of truly excellent reviews of this book on Amazon praising it highly . I agree with the praise. I remember reading the book , and wondering how the writer and main character who had failed in everything had realized my dream of writing a great book which would somehow justify the life and cancel the failure.
I do not remember the book that well. I do remember that in reading I felt it was the remarkably honest account of a person whose experience and language were rich and wild in a way mine were not.
The sympathy for the character were however qualified by a sense that even one's own self- destructiveness should have a limit - and that when it comes to screwing up things for the people closest to you - the ones who do possibly care a little.
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