[5] 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.

[2] Exley avoided being drafted in 1951 when he failed his Selective Service examination on account of injuries sustained in the car accident.

[citation needed] 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.

[7] 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.

[8] 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.

His alcoholism growing worse, Exley began a decade of briefly-held jobs and institutionalization, and spent time vacationing on Singer Island in Riviera Beach, Florida, while continuing to work on A Fan's Notes.

In 1964, Exley sent the completed manuscript for A Fan's Notes to Houghton Mifflin who rejected it, and to Joe Fox at Random House, who suggested an agent, Lynn Nesbit.

In 1970, Exley's mother purchased a small house in Alexandria Bay, New York and he temporarily moved in, though he still spent time in Florida working on Pages From a Cold Island.

The final volume in Exley's trilogy focuses on his relationship with his older brother, William, a Vietnam veteran who died in Hawaii in 1973 after a battle with cancer.

[20] Exley moved in with his aunt Frances Knapp in Alexandria Bay, and became very ill while traveling to London for a journalism assignment.

After falling into poor health in late 1990 and being hospitalized with congestive heart failure,[21] Exley cared for his ailing aunt who eventually died in 1991.

The following year Exley suffered two strokes and died at Edward John Noble Hospital in Alexandria Bay on June 17, 1992.

Entertainment Weekly gave the novel a B+ and stated: "Frederick Exley's classic 1968 account of his epic alcoholism, A Fan's Notes, bears the oxymoronic subtitle 'A Fictional Memoir.'

"[25] Also in 2010, and in part in recognition of Clarke's novel, Alex Kudera began a series of interviews with novelists on the topic of Exley and his influence on their work.

"[29] In 2012, Matthew Ricke and Brandon Chamberlin opened a bar called "the Exley" in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, named after the author of their favorite book, A Fan's Notes.