Preview of A Fan's Notes Summary:

The concomitant themes of success, fame, football, and failure are magnified in A Fan's Notes through the narrator's revelation of unrealized potential.

Measuring his own achievements in sports against those of his father, a hometown football hero, and Frank Gifford, an all-American pro, "Ex" invariably comes up short. While yet a student at USC, he learns the horrors of anonymity even as his classmate, Gifford, rides a rising star. After graduation, the narrator seeks to be deemed a writer of fiction, a legend in the manner of Mailer, Capote, Fitzgerald and, here again, Exley knows no success. He is anxious to attain acclaim among the literati in New York City, but the "city that never sleeps" greets Exley with only indifference.

A Fan's Notes is a romantic book, a book about shattered dreams, despair, and the shame that can accompany an inability to fulfill a preconceived sense of...