Pages From A Cold Mountain

A Fan's Notes #2

by Frederick Exley

A clean, unmarked and unclipped copy in a Mylar jacket cover.

Genres: Fiction, Literary Fiction, American Fiction, Novels, 20th Century, American, Literature

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1974

About the author

Frederick "Fred" Exley was a critically lauded, if not bestselling, author. He was nominated for a National Book Award for A Fan's Notes, and received the William Faulkner Award for best first novel, as well as the Rosenthal Award from the National Institute of Arts and Letters

He was a guest lecturer at the Iowa Writer's Workshop in 1972 and won a Playboy Silver medal award in 1974 for best non-fiction piece for "Saint Gloria & The Troll," an excerpt from his book Pages From Cold Island.

His later work also earned him a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, a Harper-Saxton Fellowship, and a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship.

Exley died of a stroke at 62 in 1992.

Reviews

[Ned · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finished the second of Exley’s three autobiographical “novels” after having read the third first in 1993 and the first a year later in 1994. Confused? Yes, I am. I’m quite sure this was an impulse buy, likely at Borders books on the discount shelf ($2.50) upon first moving to the Saint Louis area in 1992. As I’ve read a chapter a night, highly fatigued after crushing pressure at work and a couple of hours watching Cardinal’s baseball (suffering a 9th inning loss in the 9th inning of a one game wild card playoff against the Dodgers after a historic 17 game win streak at the end of the season), in my head I had planned to give it 3 stars. This because of the uneven writing and grandiose, complex style in the early part of the book. However, today, an unseasonably warm (yes, global warming appears real), bright Sunday, on the porch with my wife, I finished it clear-eyed. What Exley created is remarkable, a self-deprecating tell-all about his life. And oh, what a tortured, glorious, life it was. One gets the impression that were it not for Exley’s severe alcoholism and mental illnesses, he would have been one of the greats.

This is a writer talking about the life of writing. At the age of 61, I’ve read a great deal of the writers Exley admires (or excoriates), a far cry from where I was at the age of 33-34 when I read his other two. The cold island is in Florida, where Fred enjoys life amongst the cast-offs, in the local bars. The book feels like a conglomeration of segments, and likely that explains its uneven connections, but it is brilliant nonetheless. Apparently at the end he put the colossus of a draft of yellowed pages in the trunk of his rusting Chevy Nova before his final embarkment north to his home turf in upstate Watertown, NY and then as guest teacher at the Iowa Workshop. His rusting car thus housed his alcoholic ramblings in the oppressive humidity of Florida, to be later rehabilitated into this novel.

Exley is “obsessed with place” and the concept of home, as am I. This novel was precipitated by the death of Edmund Wilson, renowned critic and one of the most widely read, disciplined analysts of all time. Fred never met this man but had a lifelong affinity and psychological dependence on this man who lived near his environs in a brick house in the idyllic empire state. He interviews Wilson’s closest associate, his manuscript typist, as well as his colorful daughter. Exley’s exploits jump back and forward in time – it took me a while to get used to his habit of starting a story, then promptly jumping back in time and then jerking the reader forward. But it works, it allows context and the whole of his life. His interview with Gloria Steinem was apparently a big deal, but I found that part of the story tad tedious. His encounter with Norman Mailer in NYC was much more entertaining, as the diminutive, talent novelist, was in the final stages of his fame-seeking career after running for mayor.

Exley had a special talent for describing people, and his love for food, and, sadly, alcohol. He refers often to his 3 stints in mental hospitals (apparently schizophrenia & a host of other disorders) and is shocking honest about his personal failings. Most humans would be ashamed to reveal so much personal data about their foibles, but Fred is a bit like Charles Bukowski in self-revelation, without the braggadocio. It is an honest telling, and the reporter life from the feel occasionally evinced Hunter S. Thompson, but without the pomposity and grotesque exaggerations.

In the end, this was a true story, with a great deal of humor amongst the backdrop of anguish. Exley’s love of his subjects shines through as he reveals orders of magnitude more truth and depth about his subjects than Wikipedia, or any other biographer seeking to further their own career. This story is about the middle time of life, after the moderate success (low sales, critical accolades) of A Fan’s Notes was published. His encounter with other authors, including Robert Penn Warren, was brilliant. He mentioned my beloved Walker Percy. This might have earned him that extra star from me. But Fred’s severe alcoholism is truly horrific, he can’t even read his mail in the morning without a few drinks to avoid the shakes. I’m surprised he lived to 63, his liver must have been as fat as a black mass where the portal artery connected.

I marked a few passages, late in the book especially, where the writing was especially brilliant in describing people. Having recently visited Rochester, NY, I enjoyed the connection of time & place. I’m personally obsessed with the loss of home and place, from memories of my own childhood home (now encircled by suburbia) and my grandparents farm in MO, whose perfect comfort will die with my brain. I lament others who don’t have experience, and worry about the future of our world, as did our Fred Exley upon seeing it back in 1973! Tom Wolfe was right – sadly.

I’m tempted to re-read A Fan’s Notes, it would mean so much more to this older dog who is now able to understand where this maligned and sad author is coming from. But alas, we all have our foibles, and that would prevent me from reading others from my long “to be read” pile before my reading life is over.

[rmn · Rating 2 out of 5]

While Exley is a terrific writer, this book is mostly pointless. It’s an egotistical rambling by Exley about what a great writer and drunkard he is while the rest of the establishment is a bunch of phonies (except for Edmund Wilson and Nabokov). While there is a fantastic ~10 page segment near the end about his time as a visiting writing professor at the University of Iowa (and he should have made this the focus of the novel), this diary of Exley’s is really just that, a diary missing almost any semblance of plot development or coherence.

It’s really a shame because Exley is a phenomenal writer and has a great handle on language and meter (which he does exhibit in this book). His brilliant A Fan’s Notes is still one of the best American novels of the 20th century but it seems like after that he just missed it for some reason. I held off reading this book for a long time since it got terrible reviews, and unfortunately they were mostly right. As much as I wanted to like this and disagree with the critics, I just found it missing some vital pieces. Overall it’s not terrible, but like I said, it’s just kind of pointless.

The fact that Exley’s first novel is so fantastic and the rest of what he wrote is so pedestrian is hard to comprehend. It’s almost like if da Vinci’s first painting were the Mona Lisa and after that he only drew stick figures.

[Julio Pino · Rating 4 out of 5]

What do you do if you are a schizophrenic, alcoholic writer suffering from writer's block? Why, write a novel, in the form of a diary, about a schizophrenic, alcoholic writer suffering from writer's block. Just as in A FAN"S NOTES, here we once again enter the simultaneously insecure and egotistical world of Frederick Exley, whose only subject is himself. Exley drinks himself nearly to death; Exley checks into yet another mental hospital for electro-shock therapy; Exley hob-nobs with literary greats (Edmund Wilson, Norman Mailer) but finds inspiration only for name-dropping. Time and again he returns to a novel manuscript, entitled PAGES FROM A COLD ISLAND, that we know he will never finish, except that by publishing this book he has. If the reader wants to be kind he could quote Wittgenstein, "the only thing I am certain of is myself" and hail this novel philosophically. If he wanted to be unkind he could dismiss this facsimile of a novel as an exercise in what the American sociologist Christopher Lasch damned as "pseudo-introspection", a category he also reserved for the films of Woody Allen. Exley is not circular and recursive the way Proust and Joyce are; those two masters used their lives to explore entire societies, and in the case of Joyce, nothing less than human history. If Exley wanted to break new literary ground in making himself subject/object/celebrity(in his own mind, anyway), he succeeded. If his aim was to be remembered then, except as a medical case, he failed.

[Andrew]

I hate to say it, but this felt like a bit of a retread. I got what I needed from A Fan’s Notes, and subbing in Edmund Wilson for Frank Gifford just didn’t feel right (and I’ll bet Wilson would make a terrible halfback). There were moments – the sheer laff factor of all of the Gloria Steinem bits was a great bit of trademark Exley humor, and it felt like he was back in action. But on the whole, I have to admit that I’ll move on to volume 3 with trepidation.

[Preston Sinclair · Rating 2 out of 5]

The problem with memoirs by alcoholics is that they take on this misty, foggy nostalgic note which eventually becomes boring. We all have funny bar stories, and it's fun to imagine yourself sitting at a bar with Exley. I used to live in Alexandria Bay and frequented one of his favorite bars, Bootleggers where he had his own seat by the window to watch the tourists pass.
In PFACI Exley drops too many story lines cold, leaving the reader unsatisfied. It's like he ran out of things to say about a subject so he just drops it. That may also have something to do with the booze. His moments of lucidity become fewer and farther between, and he forgets what he was going to say. Of course, it's his little epiphanies and realizations that make the book worth reading and there are just enough of these, and they are well enough written to keep the reader turning the page.
I would need to go back and read A Fan's Notes in order to remember why I read Pages From A Cold Island. Unfortunately my summer reading list is way too long and I'm falling behind, so Exley will have to wait.

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are two Exleys in this book: the first is the hilarious skewerer of pieties from "A Fan's Notes" who leaves no one safe from his sharp tongue (least of all himself, but Gloria Steinem gets it pretty good, too); the second is the playing-it-straight biographer trying to capture the essence of writer Edmund Wilson. The first of these Exleys is deranged by drink, lust, condescension, insecurity, aimlessness, writer's block, and his own genius, and the second is cautious and surprisingly, almost disappointingly polite as he tries to rightfully canonize Wilson. I enjoy the messy Exley far more than the "straight" Exley, so I relished half this book and was only occasionally amused by the other half. Recommended for "A Fan's Notes" superfans.

[Dionysius the Areopagite]

I think this is one of the worst books I've ever read, and in being so I love it

[Tim · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the second of the three books which Exley wrote in his lifetime. The first one, "A Fan's Notes", was a fascinating, rambunctious read that I recommended to a couple of people, who ended up reading all of his books. I myself was clued in by an article of Exley's published in Esquire (about Diane Sawyer). It is interesting how Exley invariably makes a strong impression on people. One woman I talked to criticized him for discussing Diane Sawyer's ass. A lot of feminists would despise him, given his penchant for heavy drinking, screwing around, and discussing women in locker room terms; the same reasons, no doubt, why many men (and boys) would enjoy his stuff. But that is not all there is to Exley, by any means. He was a fine, traditional prose stylist, and a sharp observer of human beings and their many screw ups. In a world where most people try to keep their problems private, he presented his own struggles and shortcomings with ruthless honesty and humor (or perhaps masochistic glee?).

He only wrote three books, and they were mostly about himself. Exley was a major alcoholic. In this book he describes the life of a compulsive boozer in harrowing detail (needing 4 beers to prevent the hands from shaking, being unable to undertake air travel or teach a class without drinking, a disgusting trip to the bathroom in an airport). His alcoholism (he "spilt more than most people drank") and, I suspect, his inability to get out of his "I" voice, not to mention the emotional problems he set forth in "A Fan's Notes", limited his creative output. I wish I could say that "Notes From a Cold Island" is as hard hitting and original as that one was, but I can't. One problem is that this book covers only a couple of years in the life of our hero, and the first one covers his life from about age 20 to 35. We follow Ex as he goes from a life on the margins of the New York literary scene into boozing and indebtedness amongst a bunch of drop outs and ding dongs on Singer Island, Florida, and then to a teaching job at the University of Iowa Writers Workshop. Exley makes no apologies for his aimless wandering and boozing and womanizing; he seems to simply be resigned to this kind of life being the only kind which a lost soul like himself could have.

There is another man who is a major figure in this book, and his presence here is due to Exley's deep love and admiration for the man's work: the critic and historian Edmund Wilson. Exley credits reading Wilson with having saved his life during one very trying period. Much of the book concerns itself with the author's interviewing of Wilson's last girlfriend and amenuensis, Mary Pcolar, and her descriptions of Wilson's last days on earth. Another large section is devoted to Exley's dealings with Wilson's daughter, Rosemary, and the strange day she spends with Exley and his family. Interesting as these encounters are, Exley is not a historian or a critic; he is a storyteller, and there are many questions left dangling concerning Edmund Wilson and his feelings about him. First of all, how exactly does he feel about Wilson and his works, and why? All he tells us is that Wilson was self evidently great and that he loved him, and that Wilson saved his life, and that Wilson lived not far from Exley's home bases of Watertown and the St. Lawrence islands. Exley is very brief when discussing the great man's work, and gives no indication why a self-absorbed, apolitical rebel would appreciate it so much. He mentions "Memoirs of Hecate County" and "Upstate" several times, but then seems to judge them as second rate works. He does mention that "To The Finland Station" and "Patriotic Gore" are his two undisputed classics.

The long description of Wilson's final days is ultimately gloomy because it concentrates on the end of his days, and not all the other aspects of his life which could have been discussed. I suspect that Exley's fascination with Wilson is rooted in at least a partial conviction that Wilson is the kind of man--scholarly, wise, reserved, respected, and admired--that Exley could have become had he not possessed his various shortcomings.

Another important figure in this book is Gloria Steinem. Exley is fascinated with her and her life, and after much trying, succeeds in getting an interview with her. He uses the opportunity to indulge in a weak and short sighted attack on feminism, loaded with macho bullshit and sex talk. Unfortunately, Exley does not show much respect for women or concern for whatever legitimate gripes they may have.

For me this book really soars with its raunchy, rude anecdotes; they are dirty stories by a superb literary stylist. The writer and his bartender write a salacious letter to a Bennington College girl who has been writing the author regularly. He meets an Italian American at a restaurant bar and the two of them share a few drinks and much laughter. Our picaro hooks up with a gorgeous, rich 19 year old in the Bahamas who wants only to provide him with oral sex. This dream turns into a nightmare as he finds out that the girl's sick game is to seduce a guy, then tell her boyfriend about him and watch as he and his mates stomp the stuffing out of him, and this is exactly what happens to Exley. There is Dong, the suave teenage cocksman who tells Exley about the "button" or "the man in the boat." Exley's shares a description of a 22 year old lesbian who was sexually abused as a child, and his brief affair with her. These are good locker room yarns, and they become poignant because of the narrator's troubled life and his great gifts as a writer.

[Mark Parrish · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's perfect it's Exley, even if it seems struggled or spotted its genuine & beautiful. Much as this author sought out the stone house. I'd give an inch to sit at the bar beside him.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite of the Exley books. I'm not ashamed to admit that I can't say why. I figure as long as I don't act like that guy, I'm good to go.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not sure what's with the low rating for this book.... Granted, it isn't quite as great as A Fan's Notes, and is almost too focused on its time (the 70s) to be truly universal, but Exley's still got incredible writing chops! He's still funny, still a lunatic, and he brought me almost to tears in the second to last chapter with the pathos and desperation of his life.

[Cathy · Rating 1 out of 5]

Hated it by page 6. Have made it to pg. 30, wincing every few pages, because I've already read everything else the local library has in English.

[Henry Krinkle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I understand why this volume is not rated as highly as his first book. The long passages dedicated to Wilson can be trying.

[E · Rating 3 out of 5]

While not nearly as good as Exley's first memoir, this second entry was surprisingly engaging. The reviews are certainly mixed, but I enjoyed his bemused ramblings, even those addressing Edmund Wilson, about whom I knew very, very little. There is plenty of humor and, yes, Exley's trademark crassness. But writing this probably helped him stay sane (literally), so I can't begrudge him that. His semester teaching at the Iowa Writer's Workshop (in a Freudian slip I just wrote "Worship") is definitely a highlight of the memoir.

[Chr*s Browning · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fred Exley is like “A memoir of life? wouldn’t you rather hear about Edmund Wilson, Gloria Steinem, Norman Mailer, and all the sex I had with coeds?” Would have been three stars, but the last section knocks it down, it’s just too much

[R. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mouthwatering descriptions of lasagna and tunafish sandwiches, surreal DB Cooper power fantasies, references to The Moviegoer...this novel hit a lot of sweet spots and I've no doubt that if he'd lived longer and continued the Notes/Pages project that it would be hailed as a Proustian triumph of Balzacian comedy. Oh. No. That other guy. Rabelais. Rabelaisian comedy. A Proustian triumph of Rabelaisian comedy featuring a Dickensian cast in a Balzacian study of contemporary etc

A Fan's Notes was one of those once-in-a-great-while great reads that you just can't bring yourself to write a review for, one of those books you could see yourself pressing into the hands of another, a lover, weeping, "This? This is me, this here was me at one time."

[Erik · Rating 4 out of 5]

I re-read this last week. I am a huge Exley fan so take this with a grain of salt. This book seems a bit rushed and way too fame obsessed for me. The hero worship of Edmund Wilson seems misplaced. I read "To the Finland Station" and to be honest was a little underwhelmed. The Gloria Steinem stuff was better as was Exley's dicking around on the eponymous Island and at the Iowa Writer's workshop. But the style, that rapport with language he has, somehow survives all his blackouts and brownouts and keeps on delivering. He does repeat an image or a favorite word occasionally, heartbreaking and arresting asses and tongues lolling around mouths are much in evidence, but he can be forgiven, since he only seems to copy from himself.

[Damon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as good as A Fan's Notes - this lacks the manic quality that one has, and relies a bit too heavily on Exley's obsession with Edmund Wilson, who I know next to nothing about (and I've learned the hard way not to trust the obsessive endorsements that writers I admire have for other writers, so I don't think I'll be in any hurry to educate myself on Wilson's works). This isn't bad, it's still funny, and I guess poignant, and Exley still presents himself as a kind of likably infuriating drunken curmudgeon, but it seems to tread a lot of the same ground as his first book, and not quite as successfully.

[Ethan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not nearly as good as A Fan's Note, but hey, it's Exley.

[Paul Hansbury · Rating 2 out of 5]

Another reread...It had a lot of good stuff in it but was ultimately a giant jerkoff.