A fan's notes

A Fan's Notes is a semi-autobiographical "fictional memoir" of a man's descent into alcoholism, mental illness, and the emptiness of sports fandom, so it sits squarely in literary fiction with a strong memoir/biography component since it's explicitly framed as a memoir of the author's own life.

The moods are dark and melancholic throughout (his failures, his illness, his addiction), but the book is also darkly comic in its self-deprecating narration, hence dark-humor and melancholic. The coming-of-age structure (childhood, college, early adulthood) and the bildungsroman trope fit because the book is a bildungsroman in reverse — a man coming to terms with his failures rather than succeeding.

The sports-obsession and the obsession with Frank Gifford as a surrogate for a better life are the core thematic engines, so sports and addiction are the only tropes that genuinely apply; no romance or crime elements are present.