This is a book positioned in the 1950s through the 1960s and Exley’s narrator is trying to figure out who he is as a writer and who he wants to be. There’s a lot of drinking there’s a lot of talking and there’s especially a lot of reading. They both come off as true enough, and impossibly untrue at times. He goes into detail about his obsession with football, especially with Frank Gifford, who acts as a kind of avatar of Exley’s desires for himself, and as a stand-in father figure (even though Exley and Gifford are the same age) and becomes a totem. He’s escaping a bit from his weekly teaching gig, one that he secured by promising the principal he would never create too much of a problem with his drinking, as his reputation preceded him. He is completely enamored by both aspects. Both parts of that event seems equally important. We begin with our narrator, one Frederick Exley, going to a bar on a Sunday to drink while watching football. A brilliant novel that teeters between somewhat kilter and completely off-kilter at times.
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