Exley, Clarke, and Eleanor Henderson
When I first read that Brock Clarke’s new novel was called Exley, I felt a mixture of admiration, envy, and even a hint of betrayal. To an extent, I felt scooped for a story, but one I wasn’t certain that any one had the right to tell. How dare Clarke appropriate Frederick Exley for his own purposes? How dare any one of us stoop so low as to piggyback off the fame (even in a doubly derivative “lack there of” sort of way) of A Fan’s Notes? Indeed, I had three pages on Exley in my own new novel, and I had considered deleting these in the last revisions because it felt like theft—no, well, er, actually, because I was worried that part seemed too sentimental. (My solution, if you were wondering, was to add a paragraph to make the scene more absurd.)
But I also assumed that Clarke must be a kindred spirit, a writer with a considerable love for old Ex’s A Fan’s Notes, and then it occurred to me that there must be many of us, perhaps thousands of writers, who consider Exley something of an influence or at least are great fans of A Fan’s Notes. And I’d often wondered if many of us, or any of us, have had that heated corner conversation at a party concerning the book—the conversation we are supposed to have had about this classic American novel.
(I have, but only twice at a party, and the second time was with a publishing veteran who grunted with such emphatic affirmation that we both immediately understood and could move past the title and on to other topics. The first time was meaningful because we were lucky enough to be in Toby Olson’s high-rise condo off Rittenhouse Square, two of a few dozen students in Temple’s graduate program for creative writing; in other words, we were a bunch of nobodies getting a taste of how industrious, recognized, older writers live. Mike Leone, the guy I was talking to, had quite a bit to say about Exley as well as Richard Yates, another writer whose name has been lifted for a recent novel. I’d already read Exley a couple times, but I’m pretty sure Leone is the one who got me hooked on Yates.)
Well, I’ve turned a few pages of Clarke’s new novel, and so far, I must confess that I’m having trouble getting past the fact that Clarke’s tone is nothing like Exley’s. Where Exley is intensely emotional, as immediate as the heart attack he fears in his opening passage, Clarke’s Exley, to me, with its even, polished prose, feels much more removed from his characters. So far, the book is cerebral and literary; the writer Frederick Exley is literary and cerebral, but he is also a troubled alcoholic, and his first novel forces us to understand that life and death will be at stake from the very first page. Also, A Fan’s Notes is about failure, a life lived as a “long malaise,” and Clarke’s main character is a child, who for the sake of children everywhere, I’d love to think of as too impossibly young to be seen as failures in any regard.
Brock Clarke is a smart writer, though, and on unnumbered page 3 of his new novel, he teaches the reader: “Exley’s book begins toward the end, but he calls it a beginning anyway. Because this is one of the things I learned from Exley: anything can be a beginning as long as you call it one.”
So now, despite my resistance to his new novel, I feel as if I’m learning from Clarke. And this quotation also makes it seem like fair game to start my series of conversations about Exley and A Fan’s Notes with Eleanor Henderson, a young but accomplished writer in her own right, rather than with Clarke himself, if he’d care to speak, or perhaps Guy Jacobs, a writer who founded the Frederick Exley facebook group, or you, or some random street-hustler scribe with a Free Ex tee shirt, a forty and a blunt, and time to spare.
Eleanor Henderson’s short story, “The Farms,” was included in the 2009 edition of Best American Stories, and in graduate school, as we’ll learn, she completed a scholarly essay contrasting Exley’s life and writing with that of Sylvia Plath. I’m very thankful to have Eleanor help us introduce this series of Exley interviews. If you are a writer who’d like to talk Exley with me, please do get in touch.
Alex: Thanks so much for helping me get started, Eleanor. So what does A Fan’s Notes mean to you?
Eleanor: To me, what is most poignant and relatable and memorable about A Fan’s Notes is Ex’s fanatical dream of fame, followed by his tragic relinquishing of it. When Ex declares at the end of the book, “It was my fate, my destiny, my end, to be a fan,” my heart breaks for him, and for all of us who want to be remembered, but end up being mortal instead. Of course, what’s ironic is that, after the publication of A Fan’s Notes, Frederick Exley did achieve a cult following. As Jonathan Yardley writes in his wonderful biography, Misfit, “he wrote a book about not being famous precisely because he hoped it would make him famous, as in small measure it did.”
Alex: To what extent is it an influence on your own writing?
Eleanor: I don’t think anyone would recognize any Exley in my writing, but in terms of Exley’s conflicted process, the love-hate relationship he had with his writing, that brand of torment certainly looms over my desk. I think anyone who takes eight years to write a novel has experienced the pain of paralysis, and also the occasional affirmation that what you’re doing is worth doing. (Exley’s apartment in Singer Island, Florida, where he once painted on the wall, “A FAN’S NOTES SUCKS,” was just a few miles from where I grew up.)
Alex: Do you have vivid memories of reading this novel for the first time?
Eleanor: I was writing a big fat paper on it for a graduate course at the University of Virginia called New Journalism and the Novel, reading it side by side with Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, riveted by the similarities I was coming across on every page. I remember trying to write the paper while baby-sitting for my brother’s then-nine-month-old son. I wasn’t doing either very well. I ended up getting an extension on the paper and graduating late.
Alex: How many times have you read it?
Eleanor: I haven’t gone back to read it since I first encountered it five years ago, but during the time I was reading it, I probably circled back to certain passages dozens of times. I read it more deeply than I’ve read a lot of books, though much of it has left me by now.
Alex: Have you ever pushed it upon your friends or other writers?
Eleanor: No, but happily it was pushed upon me by a friend and writer and another Exley fan, Brendan Mathews, when I was looking for a book to compare The Bell Jar to. It’s not an obvious choice, but it was a more perfect fit than I could have asked for. In many ways it’s the masculine version of Plath’s feminist text.
Alex: Have you ever had one of those heated, emphatic conversations about it? (You know, that intense discussion we’ve read about people having about this book.)
Eleanor: I haven’t come across many people who are fans (or haters) of A Fan’s Notes, or maybe it just hasn’t come up much. I hope more people have conversations about him, now that Brock Clarke’s book is out. As far as I’m concerned, the more heated, emphatic conversations people have about writers and writing, the better.
Alex: If Fred Exley were alive today, what do you think would piss him off the most about the current literary marketplace?
Eleanor: Jonathan Franzen might piss him off. I think he’d be jealous that writers are still achieving the kind of sustained fame he longed for. As famous as Exley was at one time, I don’t think A Fan’s Notes has ever had five hundred holds at the Brooklyn library. He never did make it to the cover of Time.
Alex: Also, because so far, you are the only woman I’ve sent these to: Do you have any ambivalent feelings over Exley’s expressed feelings or portrayal of women in his writing?
Eleanor: There are some disturbing moments in A Fan’s Notes, but I guess I’m not very easily offended, or maybe I just don’t take Exley’s aggression very seriously. To me, Exley is a pathetic character, as pathetic as we all are. Like Plath, he had a great deal of bitterness, but for both of them, writing was the best and only means of constructing identity. They were masters of self-invention, and their books were their masks, portraits of the selves they wanted—or didn’t want—to be. Plath’s autobiographical novel The Bell Jar ends with a rebirth; Exley’s “fictional memoir” A Fan’s Notes ends with a nightmare. Plath wrote about the person she wanted to be, but failed to become her; Exley wrote about the person he thought he couldn’t be, but ended up becoming him—if only for a short time, before his gradual fade back to anonymity and mediocrity.
Would Exley, like Plath, have been legendary if he’d committed suicide after his first novel? Maybe. Ex considers it. But Exley, despite his depression and alcoholism, couldn’t commit suicide. He had to stick around, to see just how famous he might become. To me, that’s brave, human, and very sad.
Alex: Thank you, Eleanor, for providing some excellent responses. I plan to follow your Brendan Mathews lead. Exley enthusiasts, please do get in touch. (And, as always, Fight for Your Long Day!)
Latest posts by Alex Kudera (Posts)
- Back and Broke in Philly - June 18, 2017
- An Interview With Rebecca Schuman - April 13, 2017
- A Poor Man’s Christmas - December 25, 2016
- Excerpt from Auggie’s Revenge - December 2, 2016
- The Writer’s Parents - September 18, 2016
Print This Post
In case anyone is interested, this is the same Eleanor Henderson whose novel Ten Thousand Saints was just named one of the top five for 2011 by The New York Times.