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January 14th, 2006 by Chris Browne (Permalink)
Director: Arthur Nersesian Year: 1999 Add Comments |
Arthur Nersesian’s prose is lurid, gritty and seated in the most distorted edges of sanity. His characters cling to damaging lives and fight absurd denizens of NYC to survive the ever-maddening world around them. As is trademark with Big Apple literature, nothing is ordinary and nothing can ever be expected, but in a way, isn’t that what draws us to the city? Nersesian perfectly realizes the fictional world of NYC that all of us who have never been there know: it is one of America’s last permanent circuses. The Fuck-Up, although released by MTV’s book company, cannot be met with the stigma of immaturity like its labelmate The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Nersesian’s words are all grown up and incredibly surprising for carrying the badge of MTV and the accompanying connotation of the teen world.
The narrator of The Fuck-Up drifts from one stressing situation to the next in the early 80s East Village, rotating between a job at a porn theatre (kept by pretending to be gay), a girlfriend largely brushed aside, a colleague with entrancing gazes, and the couch of a friend more fucked up than the narrator who ultimately provides shelter from the storm. Nersesian doesn’t paint a comic and surreal picture of a world far removed, but draws the reader into a familiar world rife with the little details that make good fiction.
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