The Fuck-Up

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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.
-The Village Voice

A Trainspotting without drugs,
New York style.
-Hal Sirowitz, author of Mother Said

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.
-Time Out

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.
-Paper

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 in spite of 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 porno theater, the fuck-up's tragi-comedy is perfectly realized by Arthur Nersesian, who manages to create humor and suspense out of urban desperation. "Read it and howl," says Bruce Benderson (author of User), "and be glad it didn't happen to you."