Rather than commissioning pieces, the fourth issue of Beat the Dust was open to all writers to submit work. No theme – anything was considered. So, expect blasphemy, a gravedigger in Disneyland, Mark Ronson having sex with Lady GaGa on a piano, a dwarf pissing on dolphins, an actual message in a bottle thrown off the Isle of Wight Ferry and a child killer. Yep, it's creamy literary goodness, folks.
MS: Beat the Dust’s editor has asked that I conduct this interview as a dialogue, which sounds like a good idea to me since most interviews with writers put me to sleep. I find it infinitely more interesting to go at a writer from different angles that are not necessarily “literary” – the reader learns a lot more that way, though I suspect some questions about writing will find their way in. I hope this is okay with you, Dan… Let’s start by talking about English bulldogs. You’ve owned a succession of them. I happen to be a dog lover, so tell me about your choice of that animal. What is it about the species that attracts you?
DF: What I like about bulldogs is what I enjoy in people; defiance and stubbornness, and non-conformity.
MS: Recently I got to spend some time in the southern Arizona desert. The Sonoran landscape is like no other place on earth -- it’s like being on another planet. The flora and fauna is extraordinary and fascinating. You moved to Arizona not all that long ago. Why? How does it agree with you? Has it found its way into your work?
DF: The desert is open and expansive. Freeing. The eyes look out and the mind bounces off nothingness. Wonderful for a writer. Limitless.
Submission Date:
03 Apr 2009
Category:
Script
In Chap-book
Title:
smoke – episode one (reproduced exactly from a photocopy of the original script)
Excerpt:
Dan introduces his radio play smoke:
My radio drama smoke ran for two years from 1969-1971 on New York station WHBI. It featured the first black super-hero anywhere. It had never been done before. smoke was aired for half an hour one night per week. It was the only currently-produced radio drama on the air at the time. Near the end of the run I had a meeting with a national producer who wanted to syndicate the show. 50 stations around the country. I was drunk at the meeting and when the guy didn't offer me enough money I told him to go fuck himself. That was the end of smoke... and me for the next fifteen years.
Zsolt Alapi interviews BTD's May featured writer Mark SaFranko
Interview reprinted here with the kind permission of The Danforth Review. Mark's novels you can buy directly from the publisher Murder Slim Press.
ZA: In Lounge Lizard, Max speaks out against the writing of Joyce, Nabokov, and the Beats, to name just a few. To what extent does his taste in literature reflect your own? SaFranko: I happen to love much of Nabokov, especially Laughter In The Dark and Lolita, among others. Same for Joyce. What I was speaking against here was tiresome academic prejudices, the prejudices that proclaim a certain artist the greatest this or the greatest that. My reading tastes are surprisingly catholic, actually, and include the likes of writers from Proust and Casanova to Patricia Highsmith and Ruth Rendell. As for the Beats, I never found myself engaged by any of them. Perhaps this is my failing. On one level, I suppose that I view them as Ivy Leaguers masquerading as rebels. Once you’ve passed through an Ivy League institution, you’re never truly an outsider. You might think you are, but the world doesn’t see you as such, even if the perception is unconscious. The doors always swing open for those guys. But on the whole I’ve found the Beats pretty much boring and unreadable.
Submission Date:
19 May 2008
Category:
Script
In Chap-book
Title:
the promise
Excerpt:
The first three scenes of a play produced at the Millennium Forum Theatre in Derry, Northern Ireland in 2003.
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
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...
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