A picture of the front cover of A Fan's Notes by Frederick Exley, published by Vintage Contemporaries in April 1985.

Frederick Exley – A Fan’s Notes (1985)

Bibliographic Description

85.04.W009: Exley – A Fan’s Notes

A | FAN’S | NOTES | [diagonal rule 6.8 cm] | A Fictional Memoir | by Frederick Exley | VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES | VINTAGE BOOKS • A DIVISION OF RANDOM HOUSE • NEW YORK

First Vintage Books Edition, April 1985

200 leaves, pp. [14] 1-385 [1]

Contents: π1a blurbs and author photo, π1b “ALSO AVAILABLE IN VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES”, π2a half-title, π2b blank, π3a title, π3b imprint, π4a dedication, π4b blank, π5a “A Note to the Reader”, π5b blank, π6a epigraphs, π6b blank, π7a fly-title, π7b blank, 1-385 A Fan’s Notes: 1-28 ‘1 | [diagonal rule 19 mm] | The Nervous Light | of Sunday’, 29-71 ‘2 | [diagonal rule 19 mm] | Cheers for Stout | Steve Owen’, 72-118 ‘3 | [diagonal rule 19 mm] | Straw Hat for | a Madman’, 119-175 ‘4 | [diagonal rule 19 mm] | Onhava Regained | and Lost Again”, 176-226 ‘5 | [diagonal rule 19 mm] | Journey on a | Davenport’, 227-298 ‘6 | [diagonal rule 9 mm] | Who? Who? Who | Is Mr. Blue?’, 299-357 ‘7 | [diagonal rule 19 mm] | Lament for a | Conspiracy’, 358-385 ‘8 | [diagonal rule 19 mm] | A Dream of | Sanguinary Ends’; χ1b about the author.

Cover design by Lorraine Louie; cover illustration by David Monteil; interior author photo by Mark Jury.

Copyright: ©1968. ISBN: 394-72915-3. Price: $5.95. A Fan’s Notes was first published by Harper & Row Publishers, Inc. 1968.

Copies: JDP 1.1 (presumed)

Blurbs

  • (front cover) A singularly moving, entertaining, funny book. – The New York Times
  • A Fan’s Notes is strong, beautiful, American, one of a kind. – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
  • Exley has the Fitzgerald-like gift to wrap up the aching vision of beauty (usually in a young girl), the funnily maladroit failure to possess that beauty, and the overwhelming despair that follows the entire process, all in a single tone of narrative accuracy whose authentic sweetness is the measure of its truth-telling….A welcome reminder of what the basic business of literature and of living really is. All fans of art and life should read it. – Jack Kroll, Newsweek
  • Writers of every kind of aesthetic and cultural persuasion talk about it with one another, and press it on their friends to read….When I urge A Fan’s Notes on a friend who asks what is it about? or what is it like? I say read it, just read it. – Geoffrey Wolff, The Los Angeles Times
  • This is the horrible and hilarious account of a long failure, but a failure which turns into success: the success that this book is. A Fan’s Notes is one man’s life, written with brilliance and insight. No one should have had Exley’s life, and no one who has read it can ever forget it. – James Dickey
  • The best novel written in the English language since The Great Gatsby. – Mike McGrady, Newsday

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