Fiction. A spare and chilling account of the day-to-day experience of Sloper, a janitor in a big-city office building, WASTE explores the import of the discarded--for those who generate it, those who dispose of it, and those who are themselves discarded. From the humble prospect of his station, Sloper uncovers ominous possibility in lives he barely brushes. Brian Everson says, "Only Eugene Marten can keep a reader enthralled with the minutiae of a janitorial existence. Precisely and exquisitely detailed, WASTE is a stark little masterpiece." And Dawn Raffel writes, "[P]itch-perfect. WASTE wastes nothing--not a syllable, a beat, a ragged breath." And Sam Lipsyte writes, "There is nothing quite like the controlled burn of Eugene Marten's prose.

".