Chinese Takeout

By Arthur Nersesian Perennial, 284 pp., $12.95

"In that great road map of profoundly dumb turn-offs and insane flights that charted my meandering existence, this was undoubtedly the Jersey fucking Turnpike of stupid moves," thinks Orloff Trenchant, a struggling New York painter with poor impulse control, as he buys the next fix for the stunning, spiraling, Ivy League-educated junkie he desperately wants to paint and/or make time with.

Trenchant, who goes by "Or," is the latest deeply flawed Arthur Nersesian protagonist: a talented painter with a stubborn inability to compromise and an uncanny knack for screwing himself over. Faced with life after inadvertently driving his girlfriend into the arms of a fat-cat art collector, Or embarks on a series of cascadingly bad decisions.

Against the wishes of the friend he's subletting from, he sublets to another artist. Despite a crush on the attractive Vietnamese-American artist he's subletting to, he falls in love with the aforementioned junkie. With only two sculptures to his resumé, he takes on a rush job for a one-ton headstone to be carved in the shape of a Chinese takeout carton. Despite being given $1,000 by a friend so that he doesn't have to move the piece in his jalopy of a van, he blows the money on heroin for the object of his affection.

Nersesian renders Or's tragicomic romp through the New York art- and underworlds with the gritty, unforgiving realism that defines prior works The Fuck-Up and Manhattan Loverboy. Nersesian's feel for the maneuvering of the city, the pinball-like series of interactions -- where an errand down the block can become a crosstown adventure -- that can make even New York feel small, is what makes his city stories so wholly engrossing.

Much more than some of Nersesian's previous "heroes," Or has redeeming qualities -- he truly believes he loves his junkie/angel, Rita, and he's a talented artist struggling to make his name on his own terms. That Or at least tries to learn from his missteps places him a few rungs up Nersesian's evolutionary ladder. That Nersesian pulls off the feat without ever getting preachy puts him a few rungs up it as well. — Brian Howard

Why Girls Are Weird

By Pamela Ribon Downtown, 312 pp., $12

There are a million stories in the big city. Only a million. Thank Gore for the Internet, where you can read the musings of every single chick and her cat.

Why Girls Are Weird is the story of Anna K., the web persona of Anna Koval. Underemployed and bruised from a breakup, she posts random scenes from her life. She connects with readers because she's real -- at turns playful and cranky, clever and earnest. But she's not completely honest -- Anna K. speaks of Anna Koval's ex-boyfriend in the present tense -- and the more she corresponds with the site's fans, the deeper she digs herself into the lie.

Both Annas are fiction, but author Pamela Ribon lifted the Web entries from her own journal at

www.pamie.com. Particulars aside, there's more than a slight resemblance between Koval and Ribon, whose recaps of Gilmore Girls for Television Without Pity are often just as smart and funny as the show itself.

Even recontextualized, the entries are the book's selling point. They could have easily come off as set pieces, but snarky Valentine's Day poems and tips for faking an interest in football capture Anna's essence better than traditional chapters about the afterschool club she advises and preparations for a friend's wedding. To Ribon's credit, the first-person sad, horny and mundane parts are equally organic. Instant messaging, however, is a literary form she has yet to master.

She's on the right track when showing how journaling's anyone-can-do-it nature, youthful demographic and built-in feedback make for complicated dynamics between a writer and her audience. Readers are privy only to the details she chooses to reveal, but dropping in on a stranger's thoughts any time you choose is an innately intimate experience. In some ways, it's easier to empathize with someone if you have to fill in their blanks. And if you can't identify with, say, a rootless John Cusack fan with a dying father and hair issues, find yourself another story. — M.J. Fine