2007-09-30_06 The Panorama of the City of New York, originally uploaded by adamsofen
Arthur Nersesian, a 49-year-old playwright, poet and novelist whose wavy gray hair gives him the look of a 1960s English professor, rummaged through the black messenger bag lying next to him in a booth at the Moonstruck Diner in the East Village. Then he gleefully pulled out what appeared to be three coverless, battered paperbacks and slid them across the table.
Closer analysis revealed these volumes to be, in fact, three parts of one eviscerated book, taped together and covered with handwritten notes. Stacked one on top of the other, they formed a substantial brick whose spines, in bold red capitals, collectively revealed the title, “The Power Broker,” Robert Caro’s 1,100-plus-page 1974 biography of Robert Moses, New York’s master builder.
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The progeny to date of the love affair that began in 2006 are two novels in a projected five-volume series titled “The Five Books of Moses.” They present a fictionalized account of Moses and his impact on New York, and are being published by Akashic Books, a small New York press that specializes in adventurous urban writing often overlooked by more mainstream houses.
Mr Nersesian’s fiction concerning Robert Moses is interesting, but I think that reality is stranger than fiction, even in Mr Moses case. The recent trend of institutional re-evaluation of Robert Moses into something less of a monster is perplexing. I have a dislike-hate notion of Robert Moses. On one hand, he created a network of highways which I use almost every week, but he killed numerous mass transit projects and decimated neighborhoods with the BQE and the Cross Bronx.