#arthur nersesian

[nihilisticmidnight]

💀

[fiftytwotwentytwo]

The Fuck-Up

Author: Arthur Nersesian

Fiction / Dark Humor

Page Count: 296

How did I come across this book?:

Well - It's June 11th, 2012 - I am 10 years younger - I'm in Barnes & Noble and I see a book displayed called "The Fuck-Up"...

Yep, I bought it.

Did I read it? No, so... I am I the Fuck-Up?

Well, better late than never.

Review:

If only I read this 10 years ago when I was unknowingly basking in wasted youth - I probably would have loved it...eeehhhhh, at least enjoyed it.

This book reminds me of things I like - things like any Charles Bukowski book, The Confederacy of Dunces, or The Catcher in the Rye...

But then it's drowning with toxic pretentiousness to the point any redeeming qualities are buried.

The writing/pacing are fast but throughout reading this book you are tethered to the thoughts and point view of the protagonist who is a real piece shhhhh - well, just look at the title of the book.

I will say it again - the writing is great - it feels real and visceral but at the same time some of the main character's follies/antics are just too absurd and too ungrounded that it just comes off as implausible. So ridiculously unreal I didn't read it as dark humor, but perverse, juvenile thoughts.

I am finally glad I have finished this book because I can drop it like 3rd Period French with no remorse.

Personal Rating: 3/10

Yearly Book Total: 45

Total Page Count: 16,394 pages

[veryslowreader]

Mesopotamia by Arthur Nersesian

Modern Family: "Marco Polo"

[mymossydreams]

Bob Odenkirk interviews Arthur Nersesian about his new novel, The Five Books of (Robert) Moses - and reflects on the future of Better Call Saul.

Via AkashicBooksOfficial on YouTube - August 27, 2020 - 15:33 mins.

[thejewofkansas]

The Monthly Gravette #15

The Monthly Gravette #15

One of the elaborate endpapers for Arthur Nersesian’s 1,500-page The Five Books of (Robert) Moses. Yet again, this column is going up about two months after the last one. My apologies. First, a run-down of the books I’ve recently obtained: CoDex 1962 by the Icelandic writer Sjón, combining his trilogy about the life of a golem into one volume. I’d seen it around and been intrigued, and then I…

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[thejewofkansas]

The Monthly Gravette #14

The Monthly Gravette #14

First off, let’s go through the books I bought this month – all of which I bought at a library sale, since by and large I’m trying to keep my book buying somewhat in check: The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster – I’m curious about Auster’s work. I’m especially interested in his massive novel 4 3 2 1 (I do like my doorstoppers), but this seemed like a good place to start on his bibliography. I…

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[7r0773r]

The Fuck-Up by Arthur Nersesian

There was only love at first sight, beyond that disillusion, pain, and death. (p. 247)

***

Out front, some men headed east, and some west, but most just hung out front. I walked over to the Bowery. Most of the guys were just standing around a big oil barrel with a fire in it. Some of the more industrious ones were washing the windshields of cars that had been trapped by the red light. I used to see them from inside cars and think they brought it on to themselves, and they probably did but now it didn’t make a difference. I went over to the fire and warmed my hands with the group. I looked at their faces: idiots, criminals, retards, schizophrenics, paranoids, rejects, fuck-ups, broken-down failures. Alone, once children, never asked to be put on this earth, they ended up as jurors. Their lives were the verdict: the system, man, something had failed. (p. 262)

***

Before getting up to scrounge for food, I wondered if ever at any time anything—maybe a God or angels or some invisible force that watches everything—would know that I died, just know about it all. And then I thought. This has got to work itself out somehow. I wondered where I would be in a year. And then I realized that for the past couple of years, if asked where I would be in a year I’d probably have predicted that I’d find some meteoric, inexplicable success. For the first time, I realized that if I didn’t die, I would probably just survive, and the next year I would just be grateful to have a place and maybe a couple of bucks in some savings account and a small TV or something, and that’d do fine. God was time, I remember thinking. Time was everything. God was the pace of time. I remember thinking about this magical unit of time, a year, just a small clip of God’s pinky nail. I had faith in the duration. A year would come somehow and save me. At some point, I started repeating the phrase aloud, like a chant or a prayer. I remember that much, not because my prayers were answered, but because they got a response. (p. 274)

[veryslowreader]

Manhattan Loverboy by Arthur Nersesian 

Life in Pieces: "Hospital Boudoir Time-Out Namaste"