The Fuck-Up

by Arthur Nersesian

book data

1,552 ratings, 3.39 average rating, 159 reviews (more data...)

rating	frequency	%
5		14%
4		33%
3		34%
2		13%
1		4%

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published

May 1st 1999 (first published 1997) by MTV

binding

Paperback, 304 pages

isbn

0671027638 (isbn13: 9780671027636)

description

Arthur Nersesian's underground literary treasure is an unforgettable slice of gritty New York City life...and the darkly hilarious odyssey of an anony...more

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09/26/07

Noah rated it:

Read in November, 2002

recommends it for: people in need of toilet paper

you know when you buy a book based on the cover or title, essentially ignoring one of the more famous phrases that have to do with judging and books and covers? well this was that kind of purchase. i'm sure i'm not alone. a sparse cover. an intriguing title. just don't forget about the progtagonist you wish would die. i read this thing several years ago and still it ranks as one of my least favorite reads. i should have listened to oprah's book club and stayed the hell away from this thin...more

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02/23/09

Evan rated it:

bookshelves: 2009-reads, deliciously-nasty, tami-tomes, yearning

Read in March, 2009

I'm going through a relationship crisis right now, and for some twisted reason I felt that reading and carrying this book around would be like a little act of rebellion - would let me "own" my own fucked-up-edness. I'm glad I did, because, even though I've only read the first chapter, it made me laugh, which I thought would be impossible right now. It evokes a time and a kind of place I remember. The first chapter takes place often in a dingy second-run movie house; I frequented those ...more

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7 comments

03/21/08

Chris rated it:

Read in March, 2008

recommended to Chris by: a leg-humping dog
recommends it for: nincompoops of the basest degree

Having read “Story of the Eye”, “A History of Orgies”, and “Crash” within the last month, I was determined to give up reading and write a story of my own, inspired by the filthy aforementioned tales, which I tentatively titled “Whores On All Fours”. The idea was to chronicle my own licentious tales of bizarre and incredible sexual triumphs, but when discovering I only had two pages worth of material (with one encounter being recollected thrice within) I quickly abandoned this do...more Having read “Story of the Eye”, “A History of Orgies”, and “Crash” within the last month, I was determined to give up reading and write a story of my own, inspired by the filthy aforementioned tales, which I tentatively titled “Whores On All Fours”. The idea was to chronicle my own licentious tales of bizarre and incredible sexual triumphs, but when discovering I only had two pages worth of material (with one encounter being recollected thrice within) I quickly abandoned this doomed attempt. I got back to my roots, searching for a staggering juggernaut of literary greatness which speaks volumes of the human conditions and righteously encompasses the moral and social struggles of man in these declining modern days: in a perverse and illogical act of flagellation to this burgeoning quest for something of substance, I choose something called “The Fuck-Up” as my representative for the enlightening products of our culture. Folly.

I believe that “The Fuck-Up” was meant to be funny, in that ‘this is so absurdly banal and ridiculous’ kind of way, something which I don’t find funny (I think I giggled twice, but while hungover). I’d probably even say that when I do write something it comes across in the same wimpering vein, without the subtle graces of professionalism and talent. This doesn’t bother me so much, having accepted my lot as a simple beast. My own regrettable shortcomings aside, everything down to the alluringly minimalistic cover, the MTV stamp on the spine and the mere title of “The Fuck-Up” screams ‘I need to be held and admired for my quirky traits, yet shunned and reprimanded for my wanton display of individualistic integrity’; surely, the engrossing comedy of our clever times. I’d like to make it clear I’m also not reading this book solely for the moronic glee garnered from typing “The Fuck-Up” repeatedly, as a matter of fact I try to make sure that I spell fuck as ‘f*ck’ when writing reviews for some inexplicable reason, if only to show my desire to conform to some social standards which may or may not be part of the GoodReads Terms Of Service which I never read, so I guess I can at least try to meet them halfway should this confrontational word butt heads with their whims.

Well, let me deliver some good news; should you be a fan of Auggie Burroughs, David “Chopped Liver” Sedaris, or Chucky P, this uninspired drivel is right up your alley. You can safely discard your previously-relevant bible in the nearest fire, as a true messiah has risen from the hard streets of New Yawk to impart a tangible, sensible, and vastly-improved set of laws for living (or at least grudgingly eking out a shamelessly solipsistic and revolting fraud posing as a redeeming existence).

The rest of us wonder what the point is. It’s convenient for author Arthur Nersesian that in these troubled times, you don’t need a point to get your gibberish to the masses; the concept of having a solid plot or even a good idea is almost unfathomable, it takes too much time to drum that sh!t up, and actually committing it to paper nigh impossible. Well, let it be known that the author’s name is actually now a dis and distraction that I drop on people (talk about being a f*cking geek), but it truly is fun, Ner-ses-ian, Ner-ses-ian (just as they are aiming for that last bullseye in a heated darts game). Especially if you kind of hiss that second ‘s’, which comes naturally to you lispers out there, nobody is hitting sh!t with you mad-dogging them with that malarkey. Should anyone question what the hell a Nersesian is, bullsh!t them, tell them that the Nersesians perished pitifully begging for clemency and weeping like b!tches to a Macedonian onslaught in the days when men were merciless and the weak were punished. While they consider the probable fate of the women and sheep of the recently conquered, finish your game up in the stunned silence.

That crap above is basically as significant as any event within “The Fuck-Up”; disheartening indeed.

Our disaffected and undisciplined narrator of the book stumbles along meekly, blindly navigating the modern-day meat-grinder; his dismal and meaningless life is thrown for a loop when both his girlfriend and pseudo-mistress (he never lays the wood to her) ditch him just as he loses his embarrassing post at a second-run Theater. Unfettered, he ends up sleeping on the couch of an elder, wizened philosopher-poet/friend who affords our hero a glimpse of a life sold-short, a man who has cashed in on his dreams and been pulverized by constant rejection of his offerings to assert his statement, while seeking employment and a chance to allow his own talents to garner their due recognition. Through his craftiness and intrepid skills of double-talking-jive and persuasion he rectifies his unemployment, homelessness, and lack of female companionship while posing as a homosexual to continue working as a night manager of a gay movie theater. The proclivity for homosexuality in this piddling genre is almost disquieting; who the hell cares, not shocking, congratulations on f*cking dudes! However, our narrator is “The Fuck-Up”, and since he’s a decent but luckless fellow, each of these corrective events slowly landslides into an abysmal quagmire of sh!t. Great, just what we need, more obstacles in the insurmountable path of life for this p*ssy to cry about.

There is one scene within, however, that does ring true, but for all the wrong reasons for the author. While shacking up with a well-to-do older woman, she offers our troubled friend her Mercedes in exchange to communicate a little rough-love to her son, who is almost his own age. Frustrated by the thick-headed stupidity and flagrantly punk-ass attitude of the kid, the narrator sinks to the barbaric level of kicking the kid’s ass to emphasize the importance that the miscreant conform to his humiliating requirements. If this type of reasonable punishment was still tolerated in the rearing of our young and keeping people in line on the streets, I guarantee not only would a bright new day be around the corner, but we wouldn’t have people publishing this half-assed and weak cheetah-sh!t.
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07/26/08

Nita rated it:

Read in July, 2008

To pick up a book and realize that you're currently living in that situation doesn't make the book more interesting. In fact it's like looking into a crystal ball of failure and of lost hope. Granted I'm not as fucked up as the main character, but I'm sure as hell not that far removed from his life. Unfortunately his life/my life is an exact replica of me being 24, except I live in a bigger city now. BUt alas those are my own issues, not goodreads...

Even though I finished reading the...more

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01/27/09

christa rated it:

Read in January, 2009

Let's call this epidemic "runaway book." This is where I begin reading something funny. I'm dog-earring pages like crazy. A writer's voice is so clever and sassy that I start to imagine that my own word document privileges should be revoked.

And then, runaway book. This time, I actually felt my heart sink. I meant to mark the exact spot where it happened, in the latter fourth of "The Fuck-Up" by Arthur Nersesian, but now I can't find it. I suspect it was around th...more Let's call this epidemic "runaway book." This is where I begin reading something funny. I'm dog-earring pages like crazy. A writer's voice is so clever and sassy that I start to imagine that my own word document privileges should be revoked.

And then, runaway book. This time, I actually felt my heart sink. I meant to mark the exact spot where it happened, in the latter fourth of "The Fuck-Up" by Arthur Nersesian, but now I can't find it. I suspect it was around the part where the main character was getting annihilated at a literati party, or when he was eluding captors by climbing down fire escapes, over barbed wire fences and then cramming fistfuls of garbage down his throat for dinner. You lost me, Nersesian. You really lost me.

I see this problem in a lot of novels. Particularly "edgy" novels. "Cult Classics" and whatnot. A writer starts out sprinting, with one liners zipping all over the place. Then things get dizzy. Like the writer isn't enough in control of himself [and it's always a himself] and can't figure out how to continue being funny without crashing his plot nose first into Cirque du Soleil. I think it is a thing where a writer builds half of a story around some clever turns, and then is like "Oh. Now what?" [I can say this because I know that if I ever wrote a novel, this would also be my inclination. But I don't write novels, now, do I?]

Anyway, in a typical year, I imagine that I read 30 of these soul suckers. Each more forgettable than the last.

Plotwise, it is a complicated story board filled with chance mishaps, and peppered with the main character's laziness: Hero is a bit of an underachiever. He starts out with a girlfriend and a side project, and loses both and his job and then subsequently his apartment. He gains a couch and a new job at a porn theater, where he has to maintain a gay facade. He is thrown through a glass case during a robbery. His best friend snags a bullish woman who beats said best friend, and then his best friend commits suicide. Bye Bye couch. Hello, more complicated relationships. Every day of the book is broken bones, pocket change and chaos, only it gets more absurd and more frantic.

This is the last line that made me laugh:

"The trick was looking both punkishly gay for Sergei, but afterwards older and responsible for Glenn, the career woman."

But before that, the pages were singing: "When the train screeched into Rector Street, she fell on me just as I was inhaling open-mouthed. Her bearded armpit sunk into my mouth; It tasted like a Big Mac."

i'm hoping this runaway book thing is a fluke and give Nersesian another shot, though. I mean "It tasted like a Big Mac?" That's hilarious!

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01/03/09

Malvolio rated it:

crap. no continuity. the guy didn't even know what he was talking about. even mildly homophobic and offensive, and not in a good way.
god. i should have known better... i mean MTV books? oops.

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11/19/08

Ginya rated it:

Picked this up several years ago and probably mostly because of its minimalist cover and the fact that it said "FUCK-UP" in huge letters (hey, it doesn't take a lot to grab your attention at 16). The fact that it was an MTV approved book probably didn't hurt, as I was brainwashed at the time to think that all things pushed by MTV were cool (God, how the mighty fall).

Several years later, all I can say is that this book didn't leave an impression on me. In fact, I remember no...more

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09/30/08

Joseph rated it:

bookshelves: fiction

This was an interesting book, by a guy I'd never heard of...Reminds me of on the road in New York.

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07/16/07

Laura rated it:

bookshelves: fiction

Read in January, 1999

Unimpressive. Although the story is engrossing, Nersesian's prose style is forced--it seems to me as though he were trying too hard to produce a hybrid of Trainspotting and The Catcher in the Rye.

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04/23/09

Todd Drager rated it:

Read in November, 2008

If you're sitting at home enjoying a nice glass of wine, sitting on your favorite lounge chair with this book on your lap...you're much better off than the tragic protagonist in Nersesians' "the fuck-up". This was the first of 4 books I've read by this author and I'll keep coming back for more. Not only can Nersesian capture a brilliant image of new york city but also the futility of being a twenty-something college drop-out with all the intelligence but none of the motivation. The sit...more

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01/03/09

Michael rated it:

Read in October, 2008

This was a top of the line book I always had it sitting around but never read it. Finally one day I just decided to pick it up and give it a look and I finished it in like two days I hardly put it down.

Its about a dude thats literally a "Fuck up" no matter what he does he cant succeed in one case he wants to get a rais at the theatre he works at then goes on to pretend he's gay to get a job a a porno theatre the ends up with a wealthy woman and gets beat up for making her s...more

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02/26/09

Jail rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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10/03/08

Devon Start rated it:

bookshelves: pretentious-books

not a bad book, especially if you live in new york. there is a sadness in this book, its reflected in the changing of new york in the 80s. the disapearance or altering of places that were once familiar and home like.
there will be spoilers after this.
the nameless character goes on sort of a buddha like journey through the course of the book, he has a good woman, who of course he appreicate till its too late, he has a job(not a good one) and in the blink of an eye its all taken away an...more

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06/13/08

Matt rated it:

I bought this book because I couldn’t find “Valley of the Dolls”. The name jumped out at me because I felt like I had been wearing my fuck-up boots lately and wanted to see how bad my situation really was. If anyone could paint a more fucked up scene, it’d be an author. This story is about a fuck-up who fucks-up his relationship with his girlfriend while getting fired from his lame movie theater job for a girl he doesn’t even get to have sex with. Then he moves in with his literary...more I bought this book because I couldn’t find “Valley of the Dolls”. The name jumped out at me because I felt like I had been wearing my fuck-up boots lately and wanted to see how bad my situation really was. If anyone could paint a more fucked up scene, it’d be an author. This story is about a fuck-up who fucks-up his relationship with his girlfriend while getting fired from his lame movie theater job for a girl he doesn’t even get to have sex with. Then he moves in with his literary friend, but the two come to a boiling point when the friend’s girlfriend gets drunk and beats up the narrator. From there, he gets a job at a porno theater by acting gay, starts an affair with a mother, has sex with a movie directors pseudo-wife, steals money from his new place of employment in a scam to open a competing skin theater, gets drunk, gets coked out, gets published and loses everything very quickly. They story was alright. Nothing spectacular, but not particularly bad per se. Here are a few things that I liked though:

“My own limited Midwestern experiences broke the ritual of dating into two stages: the initial part was taking the girl to some kind of spectacle—like a movie or roller-skating. This was the ice-breaking stage, where a passing of time would allow a familiarity, an understanding of priorities, incidental touching, the cultivation of ease. The second part was trickier. It usually required the use of some enclosure, a car or an apartment, and some kind of narcotic was helpful.” (9)
“That’s not the way things worked out; my life changed viciously. But it happened in a kind of aloof suddenness that someone might possess when pushing an elevator button or hitting a switch.” (37)
“I saw an attractive, healthy girl put down an almost full bottle of beer and leave. I would kiss her is she let me, and with that criteria I wiped off some lipstick at the nozzle and poured it into my mouth without touching the rim.” (73)
“There were no revelations in that refuge for defecators and lovers. Sitting upon that unwashable and ancient toilet, I toiled, tinkered, and versified. When seated in that position for too long, something is bound to fall out and soon the bowels moved; a cheap stanza complete with all the squalid neighborhood emblems.” (106)
“Trains of thought jumped tracks while I waited for sleep.” (129)
“I felt like a golf ball after a tournament.” (233)
“But a cane is only as sober as its master.” (249)

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03/12/08

jack rated it:

Read in March, 2008

recommends it for: anyone age 17-37, anyone just out of college, fuck-ups

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

so, when i started reading this book i thought, ha ha, this book is a little bit about my own follies and foibles. the fuck-up (the character never has a name) cheats on his girlfriend and gets kicked out of his house, he's fired for asking for a raise, he pursues a girl who uses him to feel better about herself and never puts out, he has to crash on a friend's couch, he pretends to be gay to work at a porn theater. and that's just the beginning.

in short, he has no goals, he has no ...more

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03/05/09

Sarah rated it:

bookshelves: 2007, coming-of-age, fiction

Read in November, 2007

mediocre at best. back when i was all over the perks of being a wallflower, this book came out around the same time (republished by the same people who did perks). it was on my wishlist for a long time, then i took it off. but i saw it at a used book store this summer and bought it. waste of money. more of that late 80s/early 90s pensive brooding my life is sucky stuff. bah.

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01/02/09

Andrew rated it:

Read in November, 2007

So well written it feels like an autobiography. Terribly depressing at the same time, you want to slap the main character and tell him just to get his shit together. But then you remember the title and feel dumb for getting so wrapped up in a book. But then you remember, hey, this is better for me than TV. And then you don't feel so bad for reading The Fuck Up.

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05/01/09

Jennifer rated it:

Read in May, 2009

I would highly reccomend this book to anyone with balls enough to explore a world completely unlike his own. This book follows one 20 something's unambitious but not exactly apathetic foray through his NYC life. He fails at relationships, keeping a job, keeping a roof over his head and via all three and a suicide learns the only lesson there is to learn from life, namely, how to learn contentment even when things aren't awesome.

Excellent, real, gritty prose. A shorter more approacha...more

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05/07/09

Michele rated it:

Read in May, 2007

Another "Live in New York City while floundering, I can't figure out what I'm supposed to do here so I'll drink a lot and have sex with trashy dudes and ladies and live in a 200 square foot apartment and whine a lot."

But, get this? This book didn't annoy me! It's quite good. And before you know it, you're totally rooting for this guy.

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08/04/08

Eli rated it:

I hate Arthur Nersesian. He is incapable of writing a protagonist who I can feel anything for but sneeringly, incredulously irritated. Nobody who is as much of a fuck-up as the fuck-ups that Nersesian creates is worth writing a paragraph about, let alone several books. I wish he would stop writing. I bought two of his books, and not from second hand, so I have been sucked into making money for this guy. This is because he is very cleverly marketed. I also hate that sort of reader manipulation, i...more

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