READING OFF THE BEATEN PATH: Great books nobody’s heard of
As a writer, people always ask me, ‘So… what are you reading these days?’ I tend to read off the beaten path, so here’s my suggestions of some personal favorites far from the mainstream. All are fabulous. Want to read off the beaten path? These are for you.
A FAN’S NOTES, by Frederick Exley, 1968. Its category should be: Autobiographical fantasy. It’s the saga of a struggling man who lives beneath the shadow of his father (a small-town football star) as he also wrestles with his adulation for his lifelong hero, the New York Giant football great, Frank Gifford. We’re led through several events which mix humor with despair. Yet despite a certain amount of self-destruction, all the anguish (temporarily) vanishes every Sunday afternoon when the beloved Giants take the field, when Exley can live a vicarious life of fame through the exploits of a football star. Ultimately, Exley comes to the realization that his own life will never reach similar heights of stardom and, in fact, he is destined to live an entire life without fame. He will always be just a fan.
A sad story? Not the way Exley tells it. This is a very funny book. Biting description, great characters, all set against a string of football Sundays where Exley’s every moment hangs on Gifford’s next carry. A Fan’s Notes speaks to our own aspirations and dreams, yet how lasting fame is beyond the reach of most of us. Exley’s prose is beyond eloquent. His insights so keen, evoking laughs and cringes from the same sentence. Exley never asks for our pity, and there’s a certain charm to his character. It’s a book where inspiration can be drawn from failure and despite the unmistakable loss and defeat, I always feel like applauding at the end. I think you’ll feel uplifted, and the humor and wit – plentiful on every page – leaves a lasting impression. Not a sports fan? That’s okay – it’s not really a football book. (First in a trilogy; the last two have moments but IMO aren’t nearly as powerful.)
Reading in 1860!
Random writing facts Department. Does anyone know what it was like to be a reader in the 1860s? You would’ve been lucky. Consider who wrote during that decade: Charles Dickens, Victor Hugo, Mark Twain, George Eliot (he was actually a she whose real name was Mary Ann Evans), Fyodor Dostoevsky, Charles Darwin, Ivan Turgenev, Jules Verne, Lewis Carroll, Gustave Flaubert, Henrik Ibsen, Karl Marx, Herman Melville, Henry David Thoreau, Frederick Nietzsche, Walt Whitman, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Louisa May Alcott. And to cap it off, Leo Tolstoy released War and Peace in its entirety in 1869. It was a decade of true literary heavyweights.
