Discover the Best Books Written by Frederick Exley

Frederick Earl "Fred" Exley was an American writer. His fictional memoir A Fan's Notes received critical acclaim and awards. He followed it up with two more fictional memoirs. Exley was born (Frederic) on March 28, 1929, in Watertown, New York. He was the third of four children, including a twin sister, Frances, born to Earl and Charlotte. His father, who died in 1945 when Exley was 16, was a celebrated former athlete and local basketball coach whose legacy would dominate Exley's early life. 

A car accident the following year injured Exley and prevented him from graduating high school on schedule. Exley had a brief stint at Katonah High School in Katonah, New York, where he was named to the conference all-star basketball team. Exley entered Hobart College in the pre-dental program in 1949. The next year he transferred to the University of Southern California, where he began to follow the career of fellow student and future football legend Frank Gifford.

Exley avoided being drafted in 1951 when he failed his Selective Service examination because of injuries sustained in a car accident. In 1952, Exley dropped out of USC and moved to New York City to find employment, only to return a year later to complete a BA in English. He returned to New York to work in public relations for New York Central Railroad. After a year there, he relocated to their Chicago office, then began working for Rock Island Railroad in the same capacity. 

Exley soon took over as managing editor of the railroad's employee magazine, The Rocket, where his first published writing appeared. Exley was institutionalized three times in the 1950s after entering an itinerant period marked by acute alcoholism, obsession with New York Giants football, mental instability, and schizophrenia that was to provide much of the autobiographical material for his first book, A Fan's Notes. 

In 1958, Exley was admitted briefly to Stony Lodge, a private mental institution in Westchester County, New York, where he met Francena Fritz, whom he began courting. Soon after, he was admitted to Harlem Valley State Hospital, the model for the Avalon Valley facility mentioned in A Fan's Notes. It was there that Exley began writing in earnest. 

In 1959, he was released from Harlem Valley and married Fritz on October 31. They moved to Greenwich, Connecticut, and Exley was offered a teaching position at a Port Chester, New York, school. In 1960 his first daughter, Pamela Exley, was born.

In 1961 Exley received a provisional appointment as clerk and crier of the courts in Jefferson County, New York, where a lawyer friend, Gordon Phillips (the model for "the Counselor" in A Fan's Notes), asked Exley to forge a signature on a check for one of his clients. This action led to Phillips' disbarment.