Dirty Work — 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 writes: "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."