Frederick Exley Archives - The Vintage Contemporaries Bibliography

Frederick Exley – Pages from a Cold Island (1988)

Bibliographical Description

88.09.W053: Exley – Pages from a Cold Island

144 leaves, pp. [10] 1–2 3-274 [4]

First Vintage Contemporaries Edition, September 1988

Contents: π1a blurbs, π1b “ALSO BY FREDERICK EXLEY”, π2a title, π2b imprint, π3a dedications, π3b blank, π4a epigraphs, π4b blank, π5a note to the reader, π5b blank, 1 fly-title, 2 blank, 3-274 Pages from a Cold Island, χ1a about the author, χ1b blank, χ2a Vintage Contemporaries list, χ2b Vintage Contemporaries list, continued, with order form.

Cover design by Lorraine Louie; cover illustration by Dave Monteil; exterior rear author photo by Mark Jury.

Copies: JDP1.1

Blurbs

(front cover) Like A Fan’s Notes, this is a glory of a book, a heart’s needle under your skin. – Boston Globe
The second volume in Frederick Exley’s trilogy of autobiographical novels is in every way a worthy sequel to the much-acclaimed A Fan’s Notes. Pages from a Cold Island begins with the death of Edmund Wilson, a devastating event that sends Exley on an obsessive personal odyssey from Alexandria Bay on the St. Lawrence River to a resort island off the coast of Florida to the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. Our hero lurches from one outrageous encounter to another in a chronicle full of irrepressible energy and no-holds-barred confession.
Lunatic, funny, sad, and infuriating. A work of art. – Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times
Even better than A Fan’s Notes…marvelously funny. One of the truly remarkable personal chronicles of our time. – William Styron
Exley matters because beneath the surface of a life seemingly given over to too much booze and random sex and aimlessness, there is a true writer, an artist unseduced by fad and fashion. – Jonathan Yardley, New Republic

Frederick Exley – A Fan’s Notes (1988)

Bibliographical Description

88.09.W009: Exley – A Fan’s Notes: A Fictional Memoir

200 leaves, pp. [12] 1-385 [3]

Edition statement: Vintage Contemporaries Edition, September 1988 [i.e. second Vintage Contemporaries edition]

Contents: π1a blurbs, π1b ‘_{ALSO BY} F_REDERICK E_XLEY’, π2a title, π2b imprint, π3a dedication, π3b blank, π4a ‘A Note to the Reader’, π4b blank, π5a epigraphs, π5b blank, π6a fly-title, π6b 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 blank, χ2a about the author, χ2b Vintage Contemporaries ad with three blurbs.

Cover design by Lorraine Louie; cover illustration by Dave Monteil; exterior rear author photo by Mark Jury.

Copies: JDP 2.22, JDP 2.25

Blurbs

(front cover) A Fan’s Notes is strong, beautiful, American, one of a kind. – Kurt Vonnegut
The best novel written in the English language since The Great Gatsby. – Newsday
This is the horrible, 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
A singularly moving, entertaining, funny book. – The New York Times
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, Los Angeles Times
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

Frederick Exley – A Fan’s Notes (1985)

Bibliographic Description

85.04.W009: Exley – A Fan’s Notes

First Vintage Books Edition, April 1985

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

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

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