Neurotic of the Day X: Frederick Exley

There are neurotics such and you and me and the guy in the back seat of the bus who keeps blowing his nose. And then there are the Great Neurotics. From all walks of life they come, these Great Neurotics, from history and fiction and the entertainment arts they emerge, marching together, out of step, absorbed in their own thoughts, and in the way the breeze plays through their hair.

Here is today’s entry in this dubious gallery:

Frederick Exley

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“My stamina was such that most of the time I’d complete no more than three or four sentences run together precisely the way I wanted them, and by then I would be literally too tired to sit up in a chair. Rising . . . I would take the half-dozen steps to the bed . . .” And so on. From Exley’s A Fan’s Notes, a classic novel/memoir of daydreaming and despair in the modern world.

2 thoughts on “Neurotic of the Day X: Frederick Exley

  1. Wonderful to think about the Doors performing at Danbury High. The reminiscences of things like men wearing what my own father called galluses to hold up their socks. All that wonderful stuff. Jim Morrison exposed himself onstage at Yale in time for me to complain to his agent that would Jim just please just respond to my request fo use Doors lyrics in my book, Grandfather Rock and less time exposing himself, and I got back my query with the word penis circled. I had somehow misspelled it.
    Anyway, thanks Charley. Good to reach out through the mists of Covid.

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