Everyman’s Author: A Review of “Dirty Work” of author Mark SaFranko
Everyman’s Author: A Review of DIRTY WORK of author Mark SaFranko
I know Mark SaFranko. And after reading Dirty Work, I know for certain how difficult my life is going to be.
I first got into an interaction with SaFranko when I had simply posted a review of my Signed and Numbered copy of The Favor written by Mark many moons ago. I did a detailed interview with him which spanned a dozen pages. I was overjoyed at finding him. Because finding him meant finding myself. I was a lucky hack writer at the time, who had been published many times in pulp magazines of USA. Only short stories and articles and travelogues. But just like SaFranko I was also a Jack of multiple trades. It seems all aspiring literary personalities go through similar or same phases and situations in life. No matter the fact that I am born and brought up in decadent Mumbai, India and he in good old USA. He was at the time being celebrated in the newspapers of Guardian UK. He even had a column there. I thought, yes, the American Dream is real. He made it. I can make it too.
Every chapter and every page of Dirty Work reflects the sad and despicable life of a wannabe artist. I too went through phases where it seems I shouldn’t write because I have not read everything that is considered important literature. Then fluttering through low paying and high paying jobs. Never feeling an ounce of job satisfaction. Moving from one place to another and still being in the same damned spot in career and life. Women who want you but know there is nothing to have with you. Relationships spilled all over the table cloth and onto the piss-vomit stained floors. Friends, old ones, tagging along. Living a day at a time.
Yet the wonder and yearning remains. The big epic work of art that hides in my soul and that of every educated unemployed bum in civilised nations. Mark SaFranko had once made me feel the Dream can happen. It can materialise. I could be that man in a suit signing autographs on Title Pages of my own fuckin book. Then over time I realised the pain he has been through to deliver what he has.
And forget that. He still hasn’t made it big time. He still isn’t hosting award shows. He still isn’t rolling in million dollar royalty checks from top publishing houses.
So where does that put me and my fantasies and the future as a fulltime author? Well, that is all in here at DIRTY WORK. Its like a book length fortune cookie telling me to get off my ass and get some work done. Dreams and aspirations are all fine. But you gotta get up and do something about it at some point of time. It is sad that Mark SaFranko still struggles to get noticed in the list of books made by all and sundry. But he did it. He did what he believed he wanted to do. That is always better than sitting on my ass and thinking what-if or could-it.
Read Dirty Work not because it is a page-turner or because it was critically acclaimed. Read it because there are a hundred parallels between his life and so many others who want to catch that Polar Express to Santa Land.
At Amazon.com on Sale: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1291686282/
