A Fan's Notes. A Fictional Memoir - Inscribed - Frederick Exley 1968 - Harper &, New York - First Edition Inscribed ‘Read in good “mental health”’ by Exley to renowned New York professor and psychologist and psychoanalyst Avrum Ben-Avi, and then gifted by a Sarah P. I. to ABA ‘for helping me end my “journey on a davenport”’ which refers to Exley’s six months on the sofa at his mother’s house at the end of which he was consigned to a mental hospital.

Exley's cult classic, a fictional memoir based on the author's real struggle, complicated by alcohol abuse and mental illness, to avoid being a lifelong "loser." Son of a fabled high school athlete in Watertown, NY, but with no interest in athletics in a sports-rabid town, Exley's only joy was in watching, through an alcoholic haze, the NY Giants on television on Sunday afternoons at a local bar. A Giants' victory would seem to justify, for a few hours, his misshapen life. In between football games, drinking bouts, shock treatments and insulin therapy, Exley would venture out into the world to play at being a normal, successful, young man on-the-go only to find each attempt driving him toward insanity again bringing him to the conclusion he is not a hero but merely a fan.
  Provenance: Avrum Ben-Avi (1916-2008) described by the New York Times (2008) as an ‘Esteemed psychologist/psychoanalyst. He was, for some 50 years, in private practice; professor and supervisor in both The Doctoral Program and The Post Doctoral Program in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy at New York University. He started the Postdoctoral program. Handsome beyond reason, brilliant and curious, witty, charming, elegant, beloved, respected and admired by all who knew him, he was the analysts' analyst. A Jew, an atheist, he studied at Yale Divinity School for eight years after he retired. An officer in World War II, he designed tests to determine who was best fit to fly bombing missions.’

Octavo (book size 21.1x14.7cm) pp. [12] 385 [3]. In publisher’s half purple cloth over orange paper boards, spine lettered in silver and black, publisher’s logo embossed in black to upper board, top edge tinted purple, orange endpapers. Dust jacket price clipped to upper corner of front flap, and with ‘0968’ to lower corner.

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05 July 1999 issue of the
New Statesman - Back in print - A new, occasional column reassessing neglected classics.
A Fan's Notes - Frederick Exley - by Edward Platt.
Frederick Exley's life was ruled by one consuming obsession, what he called his "dream of undying fame". Exley planned to write the great American novel, and when he failed, he turned to drink and football - in particular, his team, the New York Giants - to alleviate the pain of his existence. "I gave myself up to the Giants utterly. The recompense I gained was the feeling of being alive," he writes at the beginning of A Fan's Notes, his memoir of a life of failure, disguised as an account of the author's passion for his football team. Ironically, what Exley calls the "myriad defeats" of "that long malaise, my life" had provided him with the material for the one great book he was to write. In time it earned him, too, a small portion of the fame he so passionately desired; when he died in 1992, from a drink-related illness, his reputation as a writer was founded on A Fan's Notes.

First published in 1968, A Fan's Notes has a topical theme: thanks to Nick Hornby, the idea that a man might predicate his identity on the fortunes of a football team has become commonplace, and Exley's book may, at last, find the audience it deserves. It begins in a bar in upstate New York, where Exley suffers an alcohol-induced seizure while preparing to watch the Giants on television and then tracks backwards to trace the growth of his obsessions with fame and football. From his father - who died when he was 15 - Exley inherited what he called the love of the "crowd", yet he had inherited none of the athletic ability which had earned Earl Exley the status of small-town hero. Deprived of sporting glory - and, apparently, literary talent - Exley became a drunk, "continually contemplating the world through the bubbling, cerise hue of a wine glass".

When he left university, he worked in public relations and then returned to his remarried mother's house, where he lay down on the sofa for six months; his "journey on a Davenport" ended when he was consigned to a private mental hospital. During the next three years, Exley married, divorced, fathered two children and endured another painful breakdown. His memoir reaches a climax, of sorts, when he picks a brawl in a New York street and is beaten to a standstill. This episode forces him to acknowledge the central truth of his existence: "I fought because I understood, and I could not bear to understand, that it was my destiny . . . to sit in the stands with most men and acclaim others. It was my fate, my destiny, my end, to be a fan."

Nick Hornby has contributed a generous foreword to A Fan's Notes, in which he acknowledges Exley's book as one of the inspirations for Fever Pitch, his own account of his life-long love affair with Arsenal. Yet there is nothing in Fever Pitch that can match the intensity of Exley's conception of what it means to be a fan: while Hornby measured out his life in football matches, drolly relishing the peculiar congruity between his depressive nature and the character of his beloved Arsenal, Exley is scarcely concerned with the game of football itself; instead, he is fascinated by the agonising servitude of being a fan and the way it enacts, and partially absolves, the "horror and the dismay, the laughter and the bitterness of that holocaust I called my life".

Hornby has been credited with partially rehabilitating football's tarnished image and with redeeming the male cult of fandom, yet no one would accuse Exley of rehabilitating anything - least of all his own bruised soul. A Fan's Notes is, in many ways, an ugly book: Exley is intent on proving that he was as "tough" as his father and he relishes both his own pain, and other people's. Yet his account of his unfulfilled life is an exhilarating one. He writes in a rich, fervid prose that is alive to both the aberrant nature of his tortured mind and the absurdities of life in modern America. And he is funny. Few people have the courage to write honestly about themselves; Exley makes even the boldest of confessions seem like a pallid evasion.’

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Avrum Ben-Avi (1916-2008) - Obituary - Herald Tribune, 2008 - ‘In a career that spanned five decades, former New York psychologist Avrum Ben-Avi did pioneering work on several fronts. The Sarasota retiree, who died Sept. 27 at 91, helped the Army develop psychological profiles of prospective pilots and bombardiers during World War II, co-founded New York University’s post-doctoral program in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, and initiated one of the first counseling programs in New York City for AIDS patients in the early 1980s. As an NYU professor mentoring future psychologists, he also saw as many as 13 patients a day in his private practice before retiring in 1990, said his wife, Rachel Fast Ben-Avi of Sarasota. “His work with his patients was the most fulfilling thing to him,” said his wife, who was also a clinical psychologist. Insightful, witty and sometimes unapologetically blunt, Ben-Avi took on many new challenges during his career.

Having just earned his doctorate in psychology as the United States entered World War II, he worked with other Army psychologists to create tests to gauge the suitability of prospective pilots and bombardiers for their joint missions. He returned to his native New York after the war to enter private practice as a clinical psychologist. While teaching and mentoring graduate students at NYU, he also helped establish the school’s post-doctoral program in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis in 1961. “He had a very down-to-earth, no-nonsense, grounding, ungrandiose, respectful manner,” said New York City psychologist Claire Basescu, one of his former students. As some New York City residents began contracting AIDS in the early 1980s, Ben-Avi and his wife volunteered their skills to provide group counseling in their home. “We had dinner with them, had birthday parties, celebrated Christmas. We all became like family,” she said. Born Nov. 8, 1916, in New York City, Ben-Avi “grew up with a sense that he could manage on his own,” his wife said. His father, a doctor, died when he was 6, leaving Ben-Avi to be raised by his mother, an actress. His intellectual curiosity led him to auditing courses in religion at Yale Divinity School for eight years after he retired, even though he was an atheistic Jew.’

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  Condition: Fine, small spot to title page from the inscription, in near fine price-clipped dust jacket, light rubbing to corners, 1cm closed tear to upper edge of front panel.   Ref: 111466   Price: HK$ 4,500