The Fuck Up

New
Paperback
2000
$17.44

Arthur Nersesian's underground literary treasure is an unforgettable slice of gritty New York City life...and the darkly hilarious odyssey of an anonymous slacker. He's a perennial couch-surfer, an aspiring writer searching for himself, and he's just trying to survive. But life has other things in store for the fuck-up. From being dumped by his girlfriend to getting fired for asking for a raise, from falling into a robbery to posing as a gay man to keep his job at a porn theatre, the fuck-up's tragi-comedy is perfectly realised by Arthur Nersesian, who manages to create humour and suspense out of urban desperation. Written in a style compared to crossing J.D. Salinger with Irvine Welsh, Nersesian's novel is totally absorbing.

Synopsis

Arthur Nersesian's underground literary treasure is an unforgettable slice of gritty New York City life...and the darkly hilarious odyssey of an anonymous slacker. He's a perennial couch-surfer, an aspiring writer searching for himself, and he's just trying to survive. But life has other things in store for the fuck-up. From being dumped by his girlfriend to getting fired for asking for a raise, from falling into a robbery to posing as a gay man to keep his job at a porn theatre, the fuck-up's tragi-comedy is perfectly realised by Arthur Nersesian, who manages to create humour and suspense out of urban desperation. Written in a style compared to crossing J.D. Salinger with Irvine Welsh, Nersesian's novel is totally absorbing.

$17.44

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20+ in stock

More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 304
Edition: Revised ed.
Publisher: MTV Books
Published: 08 Feb 2000
ISBN 10: 0671027638
ISBN 13: 9780671027636

Media Reviews

The Village Voice [A] terrific novel....The charm and grit of Nersesian's voice is immediately enveloping, as the down-and-out but oddly up narrator...slinks through Alphabet City and guttural utterances of love.
Paper Nersesian creates a charming everyman whose candor and sure-footed description of his physical surroundings and emotional framework help his tale flow naturally and therefore believably.
Hal Sirowitz author of Mother Said A Trainspotting without drugs, New York style.
Time Out For those who remember that the eighties were as much about destitute grit as they were about the decadent glitz described in the novels of Bret Easton Ellis and Jay McInerney, this book will come as a fast-paced reminder.
Smug Magazine Touted as the bottled essence of early eighties East Village living, The Fuck-Up is, refreshingly, nothing nearly so limited....A cult favorite, I'd say it's ready to become a legitimate religion.
Jennifer Belle author of Going Down Having grown to tolerate all of New York's degradations, Arthur Nersesian's main character is irresistibly charming, funny, and real. Nersesian's writing, reminding me at times of John Patrick Shanley and Gogol, is beautiful, especially when it is about women and love. The Fuck-Up is a terrific success.
Grid Magazine Not since The Catcher in the Rye, or John Knowles' A Separate Peace, have I read such a beautifully written book.... Nersesian's powerful, sure-footed narrative alone is so believably human in its poignancy... Nersesian mixes F trains, lumpy couches, SoHo lofts, dive bars, lonely divorcees, porn theaters, posh brownstones, embezzling employers, ritzy Hard Rock Cafe parties, deceitful, would-be kept starlets, bathroom-stall poetry, free Mercedes-Benzes, and even Mormons. Whew! I couldn't put this book down.
Flipside Fantastically alluring! I cannot recommend this book highly enough!

Author Bio

Arthur Nersesian was managing editor of the literary magazine THE PORTABLE LOWER EAST SIDE in New York. He also teaches at Eugenio Maria de Hostos Community College in the South Bronx since 1990.