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Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury) | 921 EXLEY | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
Frederick Exley was at once unique and prototypical. He inhabited his own bizarre universe and obeyed no rules except his own, yet he was a familiar and characteristic American literary type: an author whose reputation rests on a single book. His life, which he described, and disguised, and distorted in all three of his books, rivaled his "fiction. Everything he did involved a struggle, and the most important struggle of his life was his writing; out of that strife came A Fan's Notes, which Jonathan Yardley believes is one of the best books of our time. Exley was an alcoholic who drank in copious amounts, yet he always sobered up when he was ready to write. In his younger days he did time in a couple of mental institutions, which imposed involuntary discipline on him and helped him start to write. He was personally and financially irresponsible--he had no credit cards, no permanent address, and ambiguous relationships with everyone he knew--yet people loved him and took care of him. The center of Fred's strange world was Watertown in upstate New York, where he was born and grew up. Other important points of his compass included various places in Florida and Hawaii, and a funky bar in New York's Greenwich Village called the Lion's Head. No matter where he was, in the dark of night he phoned friends and subjected them to interminable monologues. To many, these were a nuisance and an imposition, but later, in the light of day, they were remembered with affection and gratitude. In Misfit, the Pulitzer Prize-winning book critic of The Washington Post portrays in full one of the most tormented, distinctive, and talented writers of the postwar years. Exley's story, which in Yardley's telling reads as if it were a novel, reveals a singular personality: raunchy, vulgar, self-centered, and even infantile, yet also loyal, self-deprecating, and unfailingly humorous. Sympathetic and affectionate, honest and unsparing, Yardley's portrait gives us a man who sacrificed everything in order to write and who becomes, even more than before, his own most memorable creation.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Frederick Exley (1929-1992) struggled to publish three books in his mostly drink-sodden life, notably a fictionalized memoir with a football voyeur as its narrator, A Fan's Notes. Here Yardley, the Washington Post book critic, expands a fond obituary into a biography. Exley at 39, after years of living on the largesse of friends and relatives who accepted him as the con artist he was, became a minor celebrity with a novel ostensibly concerning a football fan but really about "that long malaise, my life," a book Yardley describes as "at heart... a work of autobiography that was slightly altered for... legal rather than editorial reasons." Yardley elevates the "raucous and obscene" fictionalized Exley into "one of the great characters of American literature, Huck Finn gone alcoholic and dissipated." At age 40 he was burned out. Thereafter he exploited A Fan's Notes into parasitism on a more posh scale with loyal editors and optimistic publishers. He would write articles and two long-gestating additional books that, to Yardley, "announce... they are the work of a one-book writer." In 1989, a newspaper columnist called the suicidally boozing Exley "downwardly mobile." Yardley does much to redeem the "essence of the man, which was a writer," a writer who produced what Yardley considers a masterwork. His biography will itself be viewed as a fan's notes. Photos. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
The rise and fall of a one-book wonder, told by the Pulitzer Prizewinning Washington Post literary critic. If Exley's raucous ``fictional memoir'' of failure, fame, and football, A Fan's Notes, is a cult book, then Yardley (Ring: A Biography of Ring Lardner, 1977) has been a steadfast apostle. Since its publication in 1968, he has promoted it in his newspaper writing and written an introduction to the Modern Library edition (to be published simultaneously with this biography). He was also a distant friend to Exley, ``the most elusive and mysterious of men,'' a charming and exasperating ne'er-do-well, sponger, and barstool-propping man of letters. Despite this relationship, Yardley proves tough and objective in re-creating Exley's life, which differs little in substance from A Fan's Notes. Exley (192992) was the feckless younger son of the local football hero of Watertown, a small upstate New York burg. This might have been the son's only claim to fame had he not written a book that Yardley ranks alongside Invisible Man and The Adventures of Augie March for its evocation of a young man's disaffection with the American Way. A Fan's Notes apart, the biographic trail is scant in the early years, but Yardley connects Exley's departure from mainstream life not only to his father's early death and his failed romance as an adolescent with a WASP debutante, but also to a car accident that ended his own mediocre football career and presumably gave him a taste of mortality. As much as he is a fan of Exley's debut, he dismisses as ``honorable failures'' his later Pages from a Cold Island and Last Notes from Home, which follow the self-mythologizing, vagabond contours of Fitzgeraldian romanticism and Hemingwayesque machismo in chronicling Exley's alcoholism and failed marriages. Misfit adds a dark, factual foundation to Exley's one lasting book. (photos, not seen)
Booklist Review
Frederick Exley, author of the unforgettable novel A Fan's Notes, lived a sad, often pathetic life, and Washington Post book critic Yardley details its awful grimness. Exley was a man-child, a full-time alcoholic never able to sustain relationships or even hold a workaday job--and yet, he wrote one great book and two not very good ones. He had one subject--himself--and when he'd finished with it, he simply drank harder. Though Yardley never met Exley, his rave review of A Fan's Notes prompted numerous late-night phone calls from the drunken author. Exley's short, unhappy life wouldn't support a traditional biography, and Yardley's mix of reporting, reminiscing, and reflecting works just fine. He draws no dramatic conclusions but muses thoughtfully on Exley's many contradictions: "He wrote a great book about not being famous precisely because he hoped it would make him famous, as in small measure it did." A sad but beguiling and peculiarly American story about a man who could write much better than he could live. --Bill Ott
Library Journal Review
Exley, best known for his 1968 cult classic, A Fan's Notes, was indeed a misfit. He managed to sponge off his family and friends successfully throughout his life, believing it was beneath him to earn a living by conventional means. Yardley, the book critic for the Washington Post, demonstrates that Exley's great interest in life was himself and that the three novels he wrote were all strongly autobiographical. Despite his self-absorbed existence, liberally drenched in alcohol, Exley managed to win the support of those closest to him and produce a work of enduring popularity. In this exceptionally written work, Yardley treats Exley's life with candor yet without excuses. Those who have enjoyed A Fan's Notes will find this biography essential reading. Recommended for all libraries.Ronald Ratliff, Chapman H.S. Lib., Kan. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
