Chris's review of A Fan's Notes
A Fan's Notes by Frederick Exley
Edmund Wilson once wrote of This Side of Paradise that it "commits every sin except the unpardonable sin; it does not fail to live." That's about how I felt after finishing Frederick Exley's "fictionalised memoir," A Fan's Notes. The writing is often slack, occasionally maudlin; nearly every scene goes on just a bit too long; in his rush to invest each moment with significance, Exley often barrels towards interpretation of the thing while only giving us the vaguest hints of the thing itself. But boy does this book live. These pages are the thrashings of a drowning man. As such, there is little in the way of precision within them, but everything in the way of desperate vitality.
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