"This is the same Zajack that we have encountered in the past, but a Zajack tempered by decades of failure and the self-knowledge that comes from growing older, a Zajack who no longer gives a shit about anything except telling it as it is:
"'When you're a kid, scum and sleaze don't bother you. There's even something romantic about it. When you're older, it's a different story altogether. Cleanliness matters. Most of all you need a sanitary shitter, especially when you're away from home, because you worry about the transmission of germs. The last thing you want is to sink your ass into someone else's disease.'
"In a recent interview SaFranko defined transgressive literature as 'whatever flies in the face of the literary canon...[or]...literature that doesn't sell because the characters are considered unlikeable.' I'm pretty confident that Max Zajack's visceral sense of honesty will always redeem him from the taint of 'unlikeability', but that doesn't make Sometimes You Just Don't Want to Know any less powerful or hard-hitting. A merciless chronicle of fuck-ups and all-too-human failings, it shows why SaFranko is still very much a force to be reckoned with."
--- M.G. Sanchez, from the introduction to Sometimes You Just Don't Want To Know

"Resembling a gallery exhibition of charred-black hearts, these stories still needn't be read as gospels of doom. After all, everybody knows the Devil has all the best tunes, and if these two collections [Sometimes You Just Don't Want To Know and The Artistic Life] are anything to go by, it would appear the mean old bastard also has a few damn fine books."
--- Christopher Brownsword, Word Riot

"SaFranko tells it like it is. This is underground/confessional literature at its best. Right up there with Bukowski, the two Fantes and J.R. Helton -- with a dash of gritty/colorful/cultural New York'ernism added to the mix. Charles Bukowski said "Don't try". SaFranko doesn't try... he's a bloody natural."
--- Rasmus Drews, Amazon.co.uk