Lying and Making a Living: Fiction with Footnotes

Lying and Making a Living, the title from a Barry Hannah quote picks up where Short Mean Fiction leaves off. It contains more of the irreverent, hard-hitting, exhilarating, ironic, and emblematic prose we’ve come to expect from the writer and painter William Dunlap. His stories, some as short as a single page, leave the reader gasping for breath and wanting more. Whereas Short Mean Fiction, his first gathering of stories promised words and pictures, Lying and Making a Living delivers fiction with footnotes in all their subtle explanation and incongruity. Language is something of a birthright for this Southerner whose characters we know by what they do. Dunlap identifies with William Faulkner who said he invented his people and then “ran along behind them writing down what they have to say.” As with Dunlap's paintings, he feels little pride in authorship and makes no literary claims for Lying and Making a Living. But admits that for what its worth, for better or worse, and to his utter surprise, there are many more where these came from.