Lounge Lizard

Just yesterday I received a book in the post, a book by the great American writer Mark SaFranko.  On opening the parcel I was suddenly as excited as a seven year-old on Christmas day.  Lounge Lizard is the sequel to the wonderful Hating Olivia, a book which has gained a dedicated cult following, and gained an almost mythic status amongst the literary underground intelligentsia. I read hating Olivia last year or maybe the year before and it blew me away. The writing was like a fluid rock band, tight, powerful, and packed with emotion, the prose style similar to some of my favourite writers, Fante, Hamsun, Celine, Bukowski, etc.

But although I detected some obvious literary influences, the distinct voice of Safranko sung out loud and proud and true. And what’s more unlike all those long dead authors, Mark Safranko was alive and kicking and still writing. After reading Hating Olivia I was hungry for more works by Safranko, but inexplicably, I could find nothing but a couple of short stories, and several references to unpublished works.

So after running down one dead end after another I left a message for Safranko on Laura Hird’s Showcase forum, more in hope than anything, but like a miracle the great mystery author got in touch and a correspondence ensued. It was during this corro that Safranko informed that cutting-edge Murderslim Press and Savage Kick were in the processing of readying the sequel to Hating Olivia for publication, a novel called Lounge Lizard, and to be brutally honest I couldn’t wait.

But you know what it’s like, if you build something up, more often than not it turns out to be a massive anti-climax. Could Lounge Lizard possibly live up to the brilliance of Hating Olivia? A book I considered to be one of the finest published this century.  Or would it be like the sequel of many Hollywood blockbusters, which generally speaking usually turn out to be nothing more than damp squibs?

Well fear not all ye bookworms and fellow adventurous readers, for Lounge Lizard is a rollicking read, packed with taut sentences, sparkling dialogue, and guaranteed to blow your mind wide open. Against all the odds SaFranko has pulled off the rarely achieved feat of equalling the brilliance of the original and Lounge Lizard matches its mighty predecessor page for page and word for word and grabs the reader by the balls from the first page in. This is a writer at the peak of his powers; the prose is as slick as a mother fucker, the breath-taking honesty and raw emotion, a sheer joy to read. Even the artwork is spot on, an iconic luminous yellow, which will stand out like a beacon of hope on any erudite reader’s bookshelf.

Lounge Lizard charts Max Zajack’s futile attempt to integrate into the corporate machine of 1980s’ New York, where he sinks into a grinding job for The Big Telephone Machine and embarks on a series of one-night stands and affairs with women met in NY clubs.

And, teasingly that’s all I’m ganna give you of the plot. All you have to do now is go out and buy a copy of Lounge Lizard, and join that exclusive club of readers who own a SaFranko original.  One flash of Lounge Lizard in the pub or on the tube and all eyes will be on you. Most ordinary stiffs won’t know what the fuck it is, but they will want to know. But beware, your friends will be jealous, you will automatically become more attractive to the opposite sex, and if your defunct boss catches you reading it, you’re bound to labelled a subversive and earmarked for demotion.

Well, that’s it, with the publication of Lounge Lizard a ground-breaking moment in literature has occurred and you’re one of the first to read about it. And believe me I envy the fact that you still have the jolting, pulsating, eye-openning experience of reading Lounge Lizard ahead of you.

Last update : 31-12-2007 16:06

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