THINKING BACK TO the question that came up with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Loads of Learned Lumber, August 18), would this make anyone's list for a great American autobiography?
I recall it getting a lot of praise and attention when it appeared back in 1968, including a National Book Award nomination. My copy is a "Vintage Contemporaries" edition, which in the 1980s was a serious endorsement all by itself, putting Exley in such company as Denis Johnson, Harold Brodkey, Paule Marshall, Barry Hannah, and Cormac McCarthy. Just carrying a Vintage Contemporaries in those days was a sign that you knew who the cool-but-not-yet-famous writers were.
Then again, perhaps A Fan's Notes does not count as autobiography. Exley subtitled it "A Fictional Memoir." The National Book Award nomination was for fiction. Autofiction avant la lettre, we could say.
Exley could write, and the book remains interesting to read. It might be interesting to pair with Benjamin Franklin's autobiography, because Exley's book is all about not overcoming adversity, about not achieving success, about fucking up every opportunity and not being able to do yourself a lick of good. Alcoholism, depression, going home to live with mom, institutionalization, getting fired, wrecking one's marriage and family, humiliating bouts of impotence...yet all with the strong, all but unkillable conviction that one is more capable than most people, more intelligent than most people, certainly a better writer than most writers, and that somehow, someday one will become the center of attention and adulation that one seemed destined to be, like a star halfback...until one realizes, no, one is just another spectator, just another face in the bleachers...just a fan. Hence the title.
I would certainly hesitate to assign the book to undergraduates of 2023, though. Exley's presentations of women, blacks, and LGBTQ+ folks are none too aware even by the standards of 1968, and today they are just...urk. Exley could catch on with fans of Charles Bukowski, perhaps, but Exley feels a lot sorrier for himself than Bukowski ever does, and few Bukowskians would find that appealing.
Odds of a revival are slim, I suspect.
Maybe Edward Dahlberg's Because I Was Flesh? I should look at that again.
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