Beat the Dust has broken its own rules this month, devoting the whole of the May edition to the previously unpublished work of one featured author, MARK SAFRANKO. Described in a recent interview (Zsolt Alapi, The Danforth Review. Reprinted with kind permission below) as ‘one of the best writers you have probably never heard of’, Mark SaFranko is truly a writer in the broadest sense of that word – a great novelist (Hating Olivia: A Love Story and the excellent sequel Lounge Lizard, Murder Slim Press), a short story writer (a new anthology due out later this year), a playwright, a poet and a song writer. This edition of Beat the Dust gives readers a unique chance to experience the full breadth of Mark’s work and all of it previously unseen. In this first release, we have extracts from an unpublished novel, a short story, two poems and the opening scene from one of his plays. The self portraits featured in this issue too were painted by Mark. The June BTD edition will be a return to the usual format so get writing and send us your very best work via the link below right.
|
| Author: |
Zsolt Alapi interviews Mark SaFranko |
|
| |
ZA: Your writing is both dark and provocatively sexual. What’s your take on love and relationships?
SaFranko: Sexual attraction is a sort of madness that passes. The rest is very complicated. I don’t mean to be flippant here, but that about sums it up. Love and relationships are treacherous ground that any person of complexity never negotiates without extreme trepidation.
ZA: You said in an interview that you are interested in characters who are "in trouble," mostly with themselves. How does your fascination with obsession figure into this, particularly through your depiction of Max Zajack, the protagonist of Hating Olivia and Lounge Lizard?
SaFranko: Obsession is a wonderful literary device. I think of a book like Of Human Bondage, probably the best novel of sexual obsession ever written, and how once it hooks you, you can’t put it down. If readability is a literary virtue, this is a good thing. Being an obsessive type myself, it’s natural territory for me.
|
| Submission Date: |
| 12 May 2008 |
Category: |
Short story
|
Included in Chap-book
|
|
| Title: |
lost in the crowd |
| Excerpt: |
Randall Hughes is absorbed in a Times feature on an upcoming retrospective of one of France’s most fabled auteurs when he happens to glance up for the first time.
It’s half-past two in the afternoon. The crowd has grown more teeming since he arriv...
|
|
» read in full
|
|
|
| Author: |
Zsolt Alapi interviews Mark SaFranko (continued) |
|
| |
ZA: How much of Max is based on your own lived experiences or psychopathology?
SaFranko: All of Max has at least some basis in my own experiences. Sometimes there is distortion, exaggeration, for effect. On the other hand, a great deal, perhaps the most important material, is left out, sacrificed to pace. Both Hating Olivia and Lounge Lizard were significantly longer books before I took the butcher knife to them. As for my psychopathology, only a shrink could answer that.
ZA: Max is an aspiring writer, although failing at his craft. Despite this, his comments on writing and "authenticity" pervade both Hating Olivia and Lounge Lizard. To what extent did you intend the reader to accept his voice as "authority" on the creative process and writing?
SaFranko: None whatsoever. I would never expect anyone to follow my advice regarding anything. Everyone is different. So this is just Max talking to Max. That said, you can always tell a real artist from a long way off, can’t you?
|
| Submission Date: |
| 12 May 2008 |
Category: |
Poetry
|
Included in Chap-book
|
|
| Title: |
the flies |
| Excerpt: |
Being the sort of person who writes plays and film scenarios
I know my f...
|
|
» read in full
|
|
|
| Author: |
Zsolt Alapi interviews Mark SaFranko (continued) |
|
| |
ZA: Both Hating Olivia and Lounge Lizard echo Henry Miller’s Sexus and Charles Bukowski’s Women. How were you influenced by their writing? In what ways do you think your writing (and sensibility) differ from theirs?
SaFranko: You’ve made astute connections here, Zsolt, especially in the case of Sexus, which is my favorite Miller work, along with Tropic Of Capricorn and a short, late essay called Mother, China And The World Beyond. I discovered Miller much earlier than Bukowski, but love the work of both men. There are obviously things inside me – a contrariness, a dissatisfaction with everyday life, among many other things -- that respond to the world-views of both, as well as that of other so-called "confessional" writers such as Celine, Philippe Djian, and Mohammed Mrabet. Our individual pasts and experiences make for differences, however. Perhaps my cynicism is more thoroughgoing than either Miller or Bukowski. And that may be a product of the age.
|
| Submission Date: |
| 12 May 2008 |
Category: |
Script
|
Included in Chap-book
|
|
| Title: |
seedy, scene one of a play awaiting production |
| Excerpt: |
Cast of Characters
Eddie Tilsen:
A middle-aged, unemployed actor. Handsome at one time but has gone to seed. An arch, sometimes artificially charming and winsome personality, developed from years of t...
|
|
» read in full
|
|
|
| Author: |
Zsolt Alapi interviews Mark SaFranko (continued) |
|
| |
ZA: Both of your novels satirize the American Dream; specifically, Lounge Lizard is a vicious indictment of the Reagan years and the "ME" generation. Do you consider your writing to be, to some extent, social criticism?
SaFranko: I would say yes, insofar as you’re reading the inner life of an outsider, a malcontent who happens to be stuck inside a machine that’s antagonistic, or at least not sympathetic to, his deepest self. Max is a man out of step with the world. But at no time does anything political interest him, or me, in the least, which is not to say either of us is unaware of what’s going on in the world. So that’s a modifying element here. I suppose you could call it informal social criticism.
|
| Submission Date: |
| 12 May 2008 |
Category: |
Novel extract
|
Included in Chap-book
|
|
| Title: |
no strings attached (chapter one of a novel awaiting publication) |
| Excerpt: |
Clever, I remember thinking at the time. Very, very clever. Because I had it all figured out. At least that’s what I told myself.
You know how it is. Y...
|
|
» read in full
|
|
|
Podcast
Subscribe » 
|
Contact me