6/1/2023 0 Comments Fan box notes![]() His entire life is driven by the morbid fear that he is doomed to be a spectator rather than a participant, not only in sports but in life itself.Įxley first meets Frank Gifford in college, and Gifford seems blessed even back then: a handsome and self-assured "big man on campus", whose prodigious talents on the football field had made him a legend already. Exley does not waste time trying to make himself look heroic: the impression we get of the author is that of a dangerously fragile, innocent, and wounded creature, with archaic views on women and relationships, and a near suicidal impulse to drink. It uses the metaphor of Exley's own life as a tool to examine the themes of celebrity worship, self-obsession, addiction and masculinity. While on the surface A Fan's Notes may seem like a precursor to the doom and gloom memoirs that have become so trendy recently, in fact the book is an unsparing dissection of 1950s America. Exley was part of that generation for whom the 1960s social revolution arrived too late: he was a free spirit, a non-conformist, and in 1950s America this led to his being considered insane.Įxley called his book a "fictional memoir", and asked that he be considered a "writer of fantasy". Exley's life was marred by periods of alcoholism, mental illness, and he spends as much time recounting (in unsparing detail) the insulin shock treatment and electro-convulsive therapy he received, as he does talking about football. ![]() Exley's "fictional memoir" remains quite obscure, even here in America, but it is a staggering book, a beautiful book, and one deserving of a much wider readership.Īlthough the core of the book is about the empty heart of sports fandom - and the author's obsession with the New York Giants' star quarterback, Frank Gifford - it is also a heartbreaking record of personal defeat. But the most memorable book of all was Frederick Exley's A Fan's Notes. I also read Hey Rube, Hunter S Thompson's collected writings on sports, "the Bush doctrine and the downward spiral of American dumbness". Friday Night Lights was a million times better than the lacklustre movie, and Buzz Bissinger infused his sporting scenes with enough testosterone and excitement to draw even this most unsporting of reader into his world. There are too many bad sports books to mention (although I did feel that Daryl Strawberry's memoir represented some kind of nadir), but the good ones were surprisingly enjoyable.
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