Dirty Work

by Mark SaFranko

"Dirty Work" is the fourth of Mark SaFranko's series of Max Zajack novels and follows the critically acclaimed "Hating Olivia," "Lounge Lizard" and "God Bless America." "Dirty Work" is the bridge between "God Bless America" and "Hating Olivia." Max has left school and is searching for a steady job that gives him enough sanity to survive...and enough free time to write. Drawing comparisons to both "Factotum" and "Death on the Installment Plan", the novel charts Max's struggles to make cash and become a great artist. As he "How often does a man love what he’s doing? Once or twice in a lifetime if he’s lucky. For the artist it’s more complicated. He’s absorbed in himself, in his own inner machinery. The external world, the realm of dollars and cents, isn’t usually of much interest to him....I didn’t know what I was. But was I an artist? Where was the evidence? Right then and there I should have gotten up and walked out. But I didn’t. When I suffered, I tended to stay put and suffer more."

262 pages, Paperback

First published February 8, 2014

About the author

Mark SaFranko’s novels and stories have garnered rave reviews and a cult following, mainly in Europe. Hating Olivia was recently nominated for the Prix Littéraire Rive Gauche à Paris. In 2018 he was named the first Author in International Residence at the University of Lorraine in Nancy, France. His paintings have been exhibited in Europe, and he is also a musician. He divides his time between the United States and France.

Reviews

[Keijo · Rating 5 out of 5]

It all came back to me why I'd tried to throw off the yoke of the blue collar in the first place: to escape having to labor like a beast of burden, like my father and mother had all their lives in the factories and kitchens and shithouses for the rich. The hard truth of course was that you were doomed either way, no matter which collar you wore. The only difference was that in one world you went home with a backache, and in the other, a migraine....

A modern-day Factotum, Dirty Work is the story of the author’s alter ego Max Zajack's early struggles of trying to make a living in a world of menial and meaningless jobs, whilst harboring dreams of one day becoming a great artist.

It is a story of shit jobs, shitty people, shitty living conditions, unobtainable women, and shit luck, where it is only the protagonist's relentless strength of character which, as Chamfort put it, enables him to overcome the sadness inspired by the perversity of the human race.

In this sense, it reminded me of the works of Bukowski, Dan Fante, and occasionally even John Fante, though SaFranko here is far from an imitation, often surpassing the former, particularly when it comes to being insightful. An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way, as Bukowski said, whereas an artist says a hard thing in a simple way. And SaFranko, along these lines, is definitely an artist.

Life would always win out for the living, even if in the end death always subdues us all. It was strange. It was incomprehensible. It meant that we were trapped inside a mystery, all of us, every day of our lives, and that everything in life was meaningless. There was nothing we could do to free ourselves or solve the conundrum. We were like flies caught between a screen and a window. Nowhere to go.

The book is at times both hilarious, depressing, and profound—just as all good books should be—as well as always entertaining. SaFranko’s writing style strips away all the arbitrary and pointless details which grind most books to a halt, and instead focuses on the meat of the story. It therefore moves along in a brisk pace and never manages to become boring.

This is in stark contrast with most other so-called writers, who tend to dwell on endless self-masturbatory descriptions of things which only a complete dullard could possibly ever find interesting.

The fact that this book is out of print and nearly impossible to find (I was lucky enough to seemingly purchase the last used copy of it online) says something about the sorry state of the publishing industry and about the motivational brain-dead crap with colorful covers that it keeps on peddling to its moronic customers.

And if that sounds bitter, that’s because it is. And that’s also what a good book is all about—being authentic, being real, being honest, and not bullshitting around. Unfortunately, the world consists of bullshitters. Which is why it is mostly bullshit that sells.

As SaFranko quotes at the beginning of his novel, this civilization is paradise for the mediocre.

At the same time, considering that this book was published in 2014 and mine is the first review of it on Goodreads, it must be hell indeed for a true artist.