Misfit:: The Strange Life of Frederick Exley

exley managed to write, amidst the tumultuous and chaotic uncertainty of his own life, one legendary and immortal book, which everyone who cares about modern american literature must explore. yardley, here, gives us a portrait of the man, who must have been among the most exasperating creatures ever to walk the earth. yet his goodness and talent shine through, and i can't say that i wouldn't have been one of the willing multitude sucked into his web. if you hold 'a fan's notes' sacred, as i do, this is a necessary bookend.

Jonathan Yardley has scored with this very readable story of a very different man's life. Frederick Exley (author of A FAN'S NOTES)is someone who would normally be hard to write three paragraphs about - but a whole book? Yes. And with style. MISFIT isn't a full-blown biography, it is a story of a man's life without learning where his grandparent's were born, etc. Yardley gives us much insight into an author who hit the long ball with A FAN'S NOTES and then well.....after reading this book, you'll know why that was the only book in him. Exley authored two other novels, but they are hardly worthy to be mentioned in the same review as Yardley's MISFIT. My suggestion - unless you are a huge Exley fan, read A FAN'S NOTES and then read MISFIT. Then if you feel you must, read the other two - but don't miss this one.

Yardley does some wonderful spelunking here, using the standard tools of the biographer--along with some truly skillful analysis of Exley's own writing--to plumb the depths of this interesting, tragicomic, and quintessentially American personality. Readers smitten by Exley's prose in *A Fan's Notes* (and his other two books and sporadic journalism) will find much of interest in Yardley's readable account of this writer's strange life and times.

Yardley has done the impossible - his vivid account of the forces that shaped Exley's sad life are fascinating. Yardley has captured the very essence of Watertown, New York - a town 350 miles north of New York City where the winters are long and cold, employment opportunities are limited, and geographic isolation encourages the cult status of small town high school heroes. As a native of Watertown, Exley's writing always struck a very personal note with me - But Yardley succeeds in translating the many sad themes of the North Country into a very readable thesis.

I find Yardley's -Washington Post- columns and book reviews entertaining, even when I don't agree with them; but -Misfit- suffers from something I don't find in his newspaper work, much less in Exley: numbers. Thus, themes are three-fold, Exley's marriages failed for these two reasons, these two contrasting incidents demonstrate first, this, second, that. This doesn't make Misfit a bad book, just too often a schematic one, unfortunate especially considering the rich, tangential schemelessness that was his subject's wont.Yardley faced what seems a real dilemma for a biographer: how to portray a subject known for autobiographical work? To parallell Ex's real life with his not always corresponding literary life, and to fill the numerous gaps, is how. But I'm not sure how someone unfamiliar with Exley would find it; excerpts from the oeuvre are revealing enough, but by my fan's assessment one needs to be immersed in Exley's voice for some time before his magic begins to rub off. I'm not sure Misfit accomplishes this, though as a fan I was more than happy to learn what was behind the literary mask.