TDR Interview: Mark SaFranko

by Zsolt Alapi

Readers discovering the works of American novelist, short story writer, musician, songwriter, and painter, Mark SaFranko, for the first time are in for a treat. Not only is SaFranko one of the best writers you probably have never heard of, but he is one of the most interesting and iconic. SaFranko’s two most recent novels, Hating Olivia and Lounge Lizard (Murder Slim Press, UK) are brilliant tales of love, sex, and obsession, coupled with a vicious indictment of America in the post-Reagan years and the "ME" generation.

Mark SaFranko has published over fifty short stories in a great variety of magazines including Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine; as well, his work has been cited in Best American Mystery Stories 2000, and he has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He is also a playwright whose plays have been staged in New York and Ireland. SaFranko has published four novels, the most recent of which have appeared through the eclectic British underground publishers, Murder Slim Press, and are highly acclaimed. The writer Dan Fante, who wrote the forward to both of his recent novels, called SaFranko "one hardnosed, kick-ass, American original."

Hating Olivia, the first of the Max Zajack novels, is the story of one man’s obsession with a beautiful woman who becomes both his Muse and his destroyer. Max is a would-be writer, working at a series of impossible jobs to make ends meet. Along the way, he meets the mysterious Olivia, and soon they are embroiled in a torrid love affair that leads to a downward spiral of lust, depravity, and despair. But most interestingly, Hating Olivia is a study of desire with a twist, reminiscent of the best of Henry Miller and Charles Bukowski, both SaFranko’s literary predecessors.

In Lounge Lizard, we meet Max Zajack after he has been dumped by Olivia, the love of his life. His life is at a standstill: no job, no sex, and worst of all, no inspiration for his art, for Max fancies himself an artist, one of the great romantic holdouts who refuses to compromise by living a life of routine and conformity. Still, the jobs used to sustain himself keep getting worse, and Max finally takes a position as an analyst for AT&T. Max excels at the job, most probably because of his contempt for the work he does and for climbing the corporate ladder to success. As well, his luck changes with the ladies, and Max goes from being without sex in several years, to becoming a sexual Lothario, cutting a path through the bars of Manhattan, bagging every woman he encounters. Max throws himself heart and soul into instant gratification, following the demands of his id and the pleasure principle, boozing, fucking, and partying his way into the empty lives of the many women he seduces, only to come to a shocking denouement at the end of the novel, done in true, creepy SaFranko fashion.

Mark SaFranko has crafted two very fine novels, adding his unique voice to those writers beginning with D.H. Lawrence who have profoundly explored the nature of sexual desire in a world where our materially driven and self-serving society seeks to destroy our individuality and deepest human impulses.

In the following interview, SaFranko comments on obsession, the erotic in fiction, and the role of the writer as the voice and purveyor of authentic experience.

For further information on ordering copies of Mark SaFranko’s novels, go to the "Mark SaFranko Homepage" at www.murderslim.com.

[February 2008]

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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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

SaFranko: In Hating Olivia, the sex descriptions were intended to add to the honesty of the narrative. So many times I find so-called "sexually graphic" descriptions in literature to be little more than superficial. In Lounge Lizard the point was to demonstrate that an addiction or obsession can twist what should be pleasant into something less. But then sex in itself is an animalistic ritual, isn’t it? So why the window dressing? Rather than either pornographic or erotic, the intention was actually something quite different – to portray a facet of a single character at a given point in time. Incidentally, outside of the Zajack novels, you wouldn’t find much sex in any of my work.

SaFranko: God bless Dan. But first of all, it’s only been my novels that have been unwelcome in the United States. I’ve published well over 50 stories in many different types of American magazines, from the commercial and mainstream to the marginal and offbeat. My plays have been seen on many New York and Irish stages over the years. But when it comes to my novels, no. I think that the reasons for this are complex. First, I don’t fit the profile of the typical successful American novelist. No MFA, no writing workshops, no Ivy League degree. Moreover, the writers I’ve admired are either European, Simenon and Balzac and Hamsun, or American exiles, like Highsmith, Paul Bowles, Henry Miller. If the editors at the big houses are largely young females and I’m seen as a misogynist, that’s not a great match, right? If the vast majority of readers in the US are women –- and that’s a fact – then I don’t fit into the plan. If most of the books published by men in America are "ladies’ books" – in other words really intended for a female audience whether or not they’re written by women or men – then I’m in trouble. Those, I believe, are at least some of the reasons I’m not wanted in the US. What’s enormously frustrating for me is that the vast majority of my novels, another eight or ten, haven’t been able to find a home. And that’s a lot of unread work.

ZA: How would you want people to remember Mark SaFranko, the writer?

SaFranko: As multifaceted. I’m a playwright, a short story writer, an occasional poet and essayist as well as a novelist. I’m a songwriter and musician. I’ve worked as an actor. Sometimes I paint. I’ve always been fascinated by artists who have successfully crossed back and forth between disciplines: Noel Coward, Bob Dylan, Anthony Burgess, Da Vinci, Cocteau, Paul Bowles, Charlie Chaplin, etc. I’ve simply not been able to prevent myself from succumbing to the lure of the guitar, or the paint brush or whatever. Nevertheless, I get out of bed seven days a week and go straight to the typewriter, even when I have to report to a bad job. Writing is the core for me. But of course there’s this: once I’m dead, will I care how or if anyone remembers me? I don’t think that anyone, Shakespeare included, could take himself that seriously.