Frederick Exley

One evening in 1979, in Portland's Goose Hollow Inn, Peter Fritch told me about a book he'd recently finished called A Fan's Notes, by a writer named Frederick Exley.

Pete was a favorite customer of mine in the Goose, where I worked at the time, and I listened closely to his description of the novel.

He gave me a brief summary of the story, about a guy obsessed with Frank Gifford, the ex-USC and New York Giants football star. I knew about Gifford naturally enough because I grew up watching him play in news reels and on television.

Pete told me the first-person narrator in the book was a drunken madman, likely Exley embellishing autobiographical scenes from his life. You must read this book, Pete said.

The narrator of A Fan’s Notes fails at work and in marriage, obsesses about Gifford, drinks relentlessly, and repeatedly finds himself institutionalized for mental illness, Pete further informed me.

And, by the way, it’s funny, he said.

Pete's description of the novel struck me immediately as an interesting premise for a story.

As a kid just a decade earlier, I'd worshipped Joe Namath, the New York Jet who famously predicted victory against the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III. I had owned a poster of Namath, resplendent in his clean green and white uniform, dropping back to pass. Scanning down field for his sure-handed receiver Don Maynard, daubs of what looked like black shoe polish under his eyes, the curls of his longish, dark hair protruding from the back of his helmet, he seemed God-like to a kid who grew up idolizing the athletes who played the games I loved for money.

I had my share of fantasies about being a professional athlete, as kids have since sports came on the scene. When I was fifteen, I wanted to be Broadway Joe Namath.

Namath fascinated me. He wore white shoes and averred that the three elixirs—Johnny Walker Scotch, white shoes and long fur coats—combined to help create his greatness.

Along with the strongest arm to ever play professional football, until Dan Marino and John Elway came along, all of that may have been true.

But likely not.

Despite my idolatry, it hadn't occurred to me to write a novel with Broadway Joe as a central character. But as I would eventually come to realize, I hadn't an ounce of Frederick Exley's talent and imagination, either.

Exley was, quite simply, a great writer. His reputation rests on the extraordinary book my friend Pete turned me on to, and two others that weren't as well received by his critics (his biographer Jonathan Yardley calls him a "one-book" novelist).

Frederick Exley died after his long fight with alcohol and depression in 1992. He was 65.


TS