From the author of the cult classic The Fuck-Up comes a vicious new tale of art, drugs, love, and death on the Lower East Side. Orloff Trenchant is a painter who sells books on West 4th Street in Manhattan and is obsessed with mastering his craft. Desperate for cash, Or agrees to take a commission no one else will touch: he has three weeks to carve a headstone for a recently deceased restaurateur - a Chinese takeout box. As Or attempts to make his deadline, he navigates among a toxic mix of fellow artists, struggling gallery owners, bloodsucking art dealers, his politically active friends, and a haunting addict poet whose life is more out of control than Or's own. Nersesian's prose is sparkling and hypnotic in this brutal and comic story that will make you wonder if life and art are two different things.

Chinese Takeout: A Novel

Literature & Fiction

Nersesian, Arthur

United States

Harper-perennial

A Fierce and Hysterical Tale Of Self-Destruction On The Road to Being Discovered
Hannah is a struggling actress living in New York's Tribeca, and like any young thesp she is bent on success: finding paying jobs that offer good material, not just mindless roles for eager and nubile bodies. When she comes across a lost play by a dead 1980s icon -- brilliantly written, with the perfect role that will display her acting chops -- she thinks she's hit the jackpot.
But when she becomes the play's de facto producer and lands a gig on an indie film, she's forced to deal with the nonstop whirlwind of backstage maneuverings and outrageous personalities ... and with the fact that she witnessed the falling of the Twin Towers from blocks away. When Hannah loses her coveted role to an old rival, she learns a shocking truth that could bring her whole world tumbling down.
Dynamic and moving, with trademark Nersesian moments of cutting humor and truth, Unlubricated is a tale of down-and-dirty off-Broadway New York theatre, sex, love, and life in the wake of September 11.

Unlubricated: A Novel

Arthur Nersesian's underground literary treasure is an unforgettable slice of gritty New York City life. This is 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."

The Fuck-Up

Humor & Satire

MTV/Pocket Books

mary bellanova came home to her east village apartment, cooked dinner, and fought with her boyfriend, primo. but soon mary realized that primo's silence in front of the tv set was more than just one of his bad moods: primo was actually dead. other guys had abandoned mary before,but primo's exit was by far the most unique. and suddenly mary's life -- defined so far by a string of temp jobs and unfinished short stories -- takes off on a tantalizing adventure as she follows a trail of primo's ex-lovers. arthur nersesian, who created a howling new york odyssey in his smash hit the fuck-up, captures the spirit of the city itself -- jolting and full of surprise -- in this powerful new novel edged with black humor and poignancy.

Dogrun

MTV Books

"Nersesian is one of my favorite New York authors; this tome is one to lose yourself in." --Bob Odenkirk, actor, Breaking Bad
"The unquestioned authority of Robert Moses is difficult to fully grasp today--this unimaginable, outsized character whose outrageous deeds seem the stuff of novels. And that is how Nersesian is tackling him, by blending fact with fiction. Historical events and persons are interwoven with a fascinating apocalyptic story and literary license, at last revealing the tumultuous life and legacy of Robert Moses. Faced with such a daunting subject matter...Nersesian's narrative is masterful." --Brooklyn Eagle
"Imagine Kurt Vonnegut channeling the Book of Revelations and transmitting it to the faithful of a postcataclysmic New York City and you get a glimpse of the monumental literary feat Arthur Nersesian has accomplished...It is imaginative, frightening, and hilarious, often all at the same time." --Michael Imperioli, author of The Perfume Burned His Eyes
"Arthur Nersesian's fantastical magnum opus is both a love song to the vibrant culture of 'old' New York City and a cautionary commentary on the rampant political opportunism of the twenty-first century. As meticulously plotted as the best Stephen King novels, with world-building that might arouse jealousy in Philip K. Dick, The Five Books of (Robert) Moses shows us why Nersesian has established himself as one of New York City's most vital chroniclers." --T Cooper, author of Real Man Adventures and the Changers YA series
After a domestic terrorist unleashes a dirty bomb in Manhattan in 1970, making the borough uninhabitable, FBI agent Uli Sarkisian finds himself in a world that is suddenly unrecognizable, as the United States faces its greatest immigration crisis ever: finding housing for millions of its own citizens. The federal government hastily retrofits an abandoned government installation in the Nevada desert. Despite the government's best intentions, as the military pulls out of "Rescue City," the residents are increasingly left to their own devices, and tribal gang warfare fuses with democracy, forming a frightening new political system: the gangocracy.
The Five Books of (Robert) Moses alternates between the outrageous present of Rescue City and earlier in the twentieth century, detailing the events leading up to the destruction of Manhattan. We simultaneously follow legendary urban planner Robert Moses through his early years and are introduced to his equally ambitious if somewhat unbalanced older brother Paul, a brilliant electrical engineer whose jealousy toward Robert and anger at the devastation caused by the man's urban "renewal" projects leads to a dire outcome.
Arthur Nersesian's most important work to date examines the political chaos of today's world through the lens of the past. Fictional versions of real historical figures populate the pages, including Allen Ginsberg, Abbie Hoffman, and many more.

The Five Books of (Robert) Moses

Literary

Akashic Books Ltd

No simple tale of psychopathic yuppie greed, The Fuck-Up is a thriller with a literary soul set in the pre-chic lower east side. The narrative follows a nameless hero from the girlfriend who kicks him out for a most minor infidelity, to dismissal from his minimum wage usher job at a movie theater, to a literary friend's couch in Carroll Gardens, and back to Manhattan for a short-lived squat in a plush Soho loft and an entirely unorthodox management position in a gay porn theater. As he makes this emotional and socio-economic odyssey through New York's colorful if uncaring landscape, rarely with more than enough change for a cup of coffee at a Blimpie, he becomes embroiled in affairs and relationships build on mutual deceit and predicated on misinformation. The result is a descent into the world of the truly fucked up, a semi-delirious and amnesiac wandering that finds an end not in some predictable and cuddly redemption but in the solace of shared disillusion.

Akashic Books

Overly suspicious second novel from Arthur Nersesian, author of The Fuck-Up. Nersesian's brilliant follow-up to his underground classic, The Fuck-Up, Manhattan Loverboyis paranoid delusion and fantastic comedy in the service of social realism. Updating the picaresque chronicles in L. Frank Baum's Wizard of Oz and Kafka's The Trial, MLB is the tale of an orphan whose only known background is that of the city itself, a scaffold-covered grid sewn together with "Do Not Cross" tape. In this overly suspicious masterpiece, love is expressed through corrective surgery, and families meet across boardroom tables. Arthur Nersesian was managing editor of the literary magazine, the Portable Lower East Side. He was born and raised in New York City.

Manhattan Loverboy

What do Gary Condit, Woody Allen, and OJ Simpson have in common with Leslie Cauldwell, protagonist of Nersesian’s latest offering? They are Suicide Casanovas. What compels powerful men in the prime of their professional lives to risk so much? Following the commercial success of his first three novels (including cult-classic The Fuck-Up; over 50,000 copies in print), Nersesian’s new novel is a psychosexual thriller, a dramatic departure from his youthful black comedies: Humbert Humbert without the pedophile penchant, Hannibal Lechter without the appetite. Corporate attorney Leslie Cauldwell is middle-aged, handsome, and rich, but has only a few swipes left on his mental Metrocard. During a rough sex session, he garrotes his beloved wife; now he's an officially designated "sex offender," off on a bender, looking for love in all the wrong places. Twenty years earlier, when his office was high above the pornographic purgatory of Times Square, Leslie became involved with the adult-film star, Sky Pacifica. She needed a refuge, and he was ripe for the using. Following a brief fling, each went their own way. Two decades later, in 2001, Leslie is still working in Times Squarerecently sanitized with its ESPN Zone and MTV windowand fraught with guilt about his "accident" with his wife. Like Jay Gatsby pursuing an erotic American dream, Leslie, with the help of a private detective, hunts down Sky Pacifica, his latter-day Daisy. Across a landscape of S&amp;M mistresses and porn producers, from L.A. of the 80s to New York of the new millennium, we see a modern-day tale of love and loss, innocence and corruption, crime and redemption. Arthur Nersesian is the author of The Fuck-Up, Manhattan Loverboy, and Dogrun. The former managing editor of the Portable Lower East Side, he currently lives in New York City. Also available by Arthur Nersesian Manhattan Loverboy TP $13.95, 1-888451-09-2 CUSA The Fuck-Up TP $13.00, 1-888451-03-3 CUSA

Suicide Casanova

Contemporary

Sick, depraved, and heartbreakingin other words, a great read, a great book. Suicide Casanova is erotic noir and Nersesian’s hard-boiled prose comes at you like a jailhouse confession.”Jonathan Ames, author of The Extra Man Arthur Nersesian is the bestselling cult author of The Fuck-Up, Chinese Takeout, Manhattan Is a Loverboy and dogrun. The former managing editor of the Portable Lower East Side, he currently lives in New York City.

Nersesian is this generation’s Mark Twain and the East River is his Mississippi.”Jennifer Belle, author of High Maintenance Award-winning playwright Arthur Nersesian has woven an effective dramatic form through four plays, each quite funny in its own way. Each yields very powerful human results while subtly investigating the major social issues of our time.”Evangelina Borges, Trying Time Press Nersesian's cult status has grown from the success of his novels, and here for the first time his equal skills as a playwright are revealed to a hungry public. Three of the four plays in East Village Tetralogy have been staged off-Broadway in New York City. The four plays included in this volume are:Rent Control East Village Writer's Bloc Plea Bargains Spare Change

East Village Tetralogy

Dramas & Plays

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Nersesian, Arthur. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Nersesian, Arthur

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Nersesian, Arthur. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Chinese Takeout: A Novel

Unlubricated: A Novel

The Fuck-Up

Dogrun

The Five Books of (Robert) Moses

The Fuck-Up

Manhattan Loverboy

Suicide Casanova

Suicide Casanova

East Village Tetralogy