Lying and Making a Living

This collection of short stories combines several writings and curated quotes from writer and painter William Dunlap. Several of these stories are incredibly brief and this collection utilizes footnotes to make clarifications and add ironic emphasis. Mr. Dunlap utilizes quotes from other writers and his own fictional characters to make his commentaries on the vagaries of life in this collection of wildly unrelated stories.

This collection is incredibly unique and difficult to classify. Some of its stories are long enough to merit that description, while others are mere vignettes. Regardless, all are so brief as to make it difficult to follow any given storyline, especially when listening since the narrator provides the footnotes in the middle of sentences, jarring the reader out of a tale that is already jerky and lacking in flow. The stories are incredibly short, sometimes entertaining, humorous anecdotes, and some are rather crass and offensive. Other entries are morbid or ironic, while some allusions and references may resonate more with the older generation. On the whole, many of the stories seem to end right in the middle of the narrative, and some terminate before they’ve even begun, much less reached a point. The end result is that the reader is left struggling to determine what exactly was the point of what has been read/heard in this collection of mildly entertaining vignettes.

The narration added to this experience in that the narrator is very skilled at depicting various accents, though his cadence is sometimes a little off.

Niki Price