Arthur Nersesian is the Bard of Lower East Side Manhattan. His books dogrun, The Fuck- Up, Chinese Takeout, and Suicide Casanova are set in pre-gentrified Alphabet City. He introduces readers to the gritty streets of lower Manhattan and the suburbanites who moved to the area dreaming of becoming an artist, musician, or an author. His characters stumble through life trying to reach their goals; along the way some fall into prostitution; others turn to drugs. But first, they haunt the bars located around Thompkins Square Park, including the Horseshoe Bar on Avenue B and Doc Holliday’s on Avenue A. Nersesian’s grandfather was born in the East Village, and the author has lived there since 1980, so he has the street credibility to write a true sentence about East Village life. I lived there, too, so I can tell you that his prose provides the most realistic view of Alphabet City that I know. He knows every street corner, every bar, store, book stall, and even the famous 100-year-old Russian shvitz on 10th Street. Nobody does it better. Not Don DeLillo, not Richard Price, and not William Burroughs.
But now, Nersesian has produced The Five Books of (Robert) Moses, a post-apocalyptic, multiple narrative tale that spans 50 years (1930-1980) and encompasses all five New York boroughs, a significant departure in genre. Like E.L. Doctorow’s Ragtime, Moses reenacts historical events including the Weather Underground’s 1970 brownstone explosion and fictional accounts of Robert and Paul Moses, Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsburg, J. Edgar Hoover, and Jane Jacobs, the urbanist and activist. The book reads like a mash-up of “Mad Max” meets Ragtime.
In the opener, The Swing Voter of Staten Island, Nersesian introduces the protagonist Ulysses “Uli” Sarkisian, an amnesiac FBI agent on an indistinguishable mission in Rescue City, New York’s twin city in Nevada, which has no rules because the military has abandoned the area. Dirty bombs exploding throughout New York City— reminiscent of DeLillo’s White Noise — have forced New Yorkers to evacuate to Rescue City. This piques the readers’ interest, but where are government officials, and who is ordering the bombings? Here’s a hint: Walk to Sutphin, catch the Q28 to Fulton Street, change to the B17 and take it to the East Village in Manhattan, wait outside Cooper Union for Dropt to arrive. Later, the reader meets Uli’s sister, Karen Sarkisian, a council cop captain who investigates numerous odd events for the Crappers, the political party of Manhattan and Brooklyn.
It is in these pages that the author skillfully introduces fictional accounts of Timothy Leary, Abbie Hoffman, and Allen Ginsburg making Swing Voter compelling enough to stand on its own, but it also serves as exposition for the five-book compendium. This is why Nersesian adroitly introduces the main conflict to the reader – the fight for total control of New York City between The Crappers (Manhattan and Brooklyn) and The Piggers (who represent The Bronx and Queens). Staten Island is, well, on its own and serves as the swing vote for overall supremacy. Nersesian leverages his familiarity of New York’s landmarks and his deep knowledge of the city’s history — but for the first time in his career, he writes in postmodern form, replete with zombie orgies and recently freed zoo animals roaming the East Village: “a single-humped Arabian camel rolling across Avenue A.” In addition, like any postmodernist, he gives himself room to do so – 1,506 pages of room to be exact.
In book two, The Sacrificial Circumcision of the Bronx, Nersesian writes deftly about the Moses family, including the matriarch Bella, older brother Paul and famous builder Robert. Nersesian focuses on older brother Paul’s heroics, including his obsession with munitions and the Mexican Revolution. It is in this portion of the pentalogy that the reader learns more about the events leading to the destruction of New York City. And they identify the conflict between Paul and younger brother Robert Moses, whose power increases, as does his evil actions, but it is the way he treats Paul and the citizens of The Bronx that causes the older brother to act heinously.
In book three, The Terrible Beauty of Brooklyn, the reader learns more about Bea Moses Meyer, Paul’s estranged daughter who becomes an Andy Warhol Superstar. The action continues with another bombing that floods lower Manhattan, reminiscent of Hurricane Sandy. Familiar names such as Andy Warhol and his Andy Warhol Superstars — Ondine, Jackie Curtis, Candy Darling, and Valerie Solanas — thrust the narrative into chaotic but compelling scenes. A critical Robert-Paul Mosses conflict occurs in this section, finalizing one aspect of their relationship. Moving the text into the ethereal, Nersesian melds Paul Moses’s thoughts with Uli’s, establishing a telepathic unison:
“I saw you fall in love with Millie as a young man in college, Uli explained. I saw your relationship with your first wife go sour as you became obsessed with your brother [Robert]. I saw you lose your pool club in Pennsylvania during the Great Depression.”
In the fourth book, The Postmorphogenesis of Manhattan, the action is mostly set in the East Village where the author circles back to Cooper Union, the famous art and architecture school. Reader, remember the mantra: Walk to Sutphin, catch the Q28 to Fulton Street, change to the B17 and take it to the East Village in Manhattan, wait outside Cooper Union for Dropt to arrive. Nersesian further displays his knowledge of the East Village in this portion of the text by describing a catastrophic event at Thompkins Square Park, a late-night meal at the famous Odessa Diner on Avenue A, and a trip to a safe house on Avenue C. Below is passage displaying Nersesian’s talent for writing about the area:
“I was living on the streets of the Lower East Side, hustling for drugs in trashy joints and bars. I was sleeping in Union Square Park – until I met Terry Robbins. Where? In Max’s Kansas City.”
Karen Sarkisian’s interrogation of a Pigger is evident in the above passage. Then, the author continues his creative word play (notice Rock & Filler Center) by describing Karen’s investigation of Erica Rudolph:
“She had worried that Erica and her henchman would head to some remote location in the outer boroughs, where her presence would stand out and things would get dicey. So she was grateful when they eventually pulled into a parking lot in Midtown, just a few blocks from her Rock & Filler Center Office.”
Eric Rudolph, not Erica Rudolph, is serving a life sentence for his role in the Olympic Park Bomber during the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta.
In the fifth and final book, The Cognitive Contagion of Queens, Uli and Karen cross the desert, in Homer-esque fashion, escaping a burning Rescue City. Mr. Nersesian keeps the Piggers versus Crappers conflict alive until the very end, channeling his inner William Goldman and Philip Dick. Uli is not under Calypso’s spell for seven years, but he does run into desert versions of Scylla and Charybdis.
It took Nersesian 25 years to write a book about societal and familial collapse, a great departure for the author who writes realistically about New York City, its inhabitants, and its landmarks. The Five Books of (Robert) Moses may bring more attention to the Bard of the Lower East Side, but then again, maybe he doesn’t want the attention.
[Published by Akashic Books on July 28, 2020, 1,506 pages, $44.95 hardcover]
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A Conversation with Arthur Nersesian
Wayne Catan: What exactly is Uli’s mission?
Arthur Nersesian: You can almost retitle the series Uli’s Mission. We never learn of his official mission. By the end of the book, without giving anything away, he painfully extrapolates his mission. A lot of his mission as he regains his memory — and the questionable things he did for the FBI and COINTELPRO – is self-discovery. That in turn leads to his own mental crack up — and since I’m coining Fitzgerald, his inability to hold two opposing points of view and still retain the ability to function. Subsequently he finds himself being flushed down into Rescue City where loses his memory and is forced to remember and confront everything he packed away, which, without intending to sound too schmaltzy, should be everyone’s mission.
WC: Did you read Philip Dick, E.L. Doctorow, or Don DeLillo (or any other writers) while you were preparing, or conducting research, for the novel?
AN: I did not. When I was younger and reading more than I was writing, a lot of those writers and countless others certainly influenced me. But by the time I started this work, I devoted most of my reading time into trying to sort out and understand so many disparate historical facts, in order to use and sometimes skewer them accurately. I did feel a duty to try to be true to a lot of very original people who actually lived.
WC: I read Gladyss of the Hunt and Mesopotamia during the quarantine. I’ve read Dogrun, Manhattan Loverboy, The Fuck-up, and Chinese Takeout. Why did you change direction and write a dystopian novel? I understand that you were working on The FiveBooks of (Robert) Moses as you were writing the aforementioned books.
AN: It’s an interesting question inasmuch as it assumes the bibliography dates match the writer’s work and how the writer evolves. Sometimes books don’t get published in the order that they are written. In another of my books I actually rewrote the end in a later edition. Books take so long to stew (and require an equal amount of time to just be left alone in order to regain some objectivity), that I usually have an overlap. I’ll finish one book as I’m beginning another. In the case of Moses, that was a constant third book for decades, something I began my first cycle — The Fuck-Up, Dogrun & MLB — but before Suicide Casanova — which might be more similar in juggling multiple narratives over a period of time. As for why I wrote a dystopian novel, look no further than today. And I don’t just mean Trump. The impetus for the book was being born and raised in New York City, where race, class and culture were both tossed together and yet greatly divided, not like today.
WC: How long did you live in the East Village?
AN: I’ve lived on the periphery since the early 1970s and first moved here in 1980. I was born and raised in New York City and my grandfather was born in the East Village, so the place is in my DNA. It’s sort of a curse.
WC: What is it about Robert and Paul Moses, and the Moses family, that motivated you to write about them?
AN: The life of Robert Moses is a big part of the political and history of New York City, so I was immediately drawn to him. There is a lot of controversy about Robert Moses, but the one thing I had the most problem with is how he treated his older brother, cutting him off, and probably blocking his career. Paul Moses was regarded as being as brilliant as his younger brother. From a fictional point of view, their relationship was nearly a gift; two gifted brothers, natural rivals, a ready-made protagonist and antagonist, just waiting to be utilized.