by: Frederick Exley
Synopsis
A Fan's Notes is a sardonic account of mental illness, alcoholism, insulin shock therapy and electroconvulsive therapy, and the black hole of sports fandom. Its central preoccupation with a failure to measure up to the American dream has earned the novel comparisons to Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. Beginning with his childhood in Watertown, New York, growing up under a sports-obsessed father and following his college years at the USC, where he first came to know his hero Frank Gifford, Exley recounts years of intermittent stints at psychiatric institutions, his failed marriage to a woman named Patience, successive unfulfilling jobs teaching English literature to high school students, and working for a Manhattan public relations firm under contract to a weapons company, and, by way of Gifford, his obsession with the New York Giants.
Exley's introspective "fictional memoir", a tragicomic indictment of 1950s American culture, examines in lucid prose themes of celebrity, masculinity, self-absorption, and addiction, morbidly charting his failures in life against the electrifying successes of his football hero and former classmate. The title comes from Exley's fear that he is doomed to be a spectator in life as well as in sports.
Criticism
Frederick Exley , is an overeducated and under employed young adult, he also drank booze and went insane. His novel "A fan's Notes" is a mere confession on his bitter life experiences. we can say that he wrote it not just to be honest on his self but as well as to inspire everyone especially those people who think of themselves as a "loser" of some sort life's challenge. A sad fate turns to be inspiring novel for those who read it although miseries wrapped in every page of the book. The novel itself tells to its critics that it is autobiographical type, since the author itself wrote it. The gloomy mood conditions the readers to set the atmosphere of the novel. it is also called as a "Fictional Memoir" for the unbelievable sets of misfortunes that passed on one's life and not necessarily that everything written on it was really his story some were just added spices on the novel to make it more interesting.
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