The Dunning Man

by Kevin Fortuna

Overview

Named by Buzzfeed Books as one of the "22 Most Exciting Literary Debuts of 2014," The Dunning Man features anti-heroes who reject society's rules. Characters from all walks of life--a philosophizing hip-hop star, a college girl trying to make sense of her infatuation with her wild best friend, a black sheep scion disillusioned by his morally corrupt family and friends, and a housewife trying to make peace with the past and her wayward husband. They each exist in the here and now, living for what's possible and what's left--not what they've left behind. These are powerful tales of truth seekers imbued with larger-than-life personalities and the all-consuming need to find something worth seeking.

The stories in The Dunning Man... are funny, explosive and disarmingly moving... [they] pulse with life, and the men and women who figure in them are real people, regular people, working people. People like you and me. It's good to read about them again. --ESQUIRE

The mostly Irish American characters in The Dunning Man should know better by now. That they don't (repeating their trespasses again and again) is what makes them so compelling and all too real. --PARADE

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781944884185
Publisher:	Lavender Ink
Publication date:	01/08/2017
Pages:	142
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.33(d)

About the Author

Kevin Fortuna lives in Cold Spring, New York. He obtained a Bachelors degree in English Literature from Georgetown University, where he graduated summa cum laude. He is the recipient of a Lannan Literary Fellowship, the Quicksall Medal for Writing, a Fellowship in Fiction at the Prague Summer Writers Workshop and a Full Fellowship in Fiction at the University of New Orleans, where he received his MFA

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Thanks to Kevin Fortuna's empathetic and precise portrayals, these stories will linger in your imaginationlong after the people you meet here have stumbled out into the night.
— Miles Harvey, author of The Island of Lost Maps

Kevin Fortuna's complex and compelling characters can't be separated from the equally rich familydrama and surprising twists of his narratives, always the sign of a real writer. I'm in awe of this man'simagination and this story collection. A wonderful debut.
— Joseph Boyden, Gillerprize-winning author of The Orendaand Through Black Spruce

These stories are by turns wry and funny, harrowing and heartbreaking. Kevin Fortuna writes withstartling clarity and insight about success, hope and longing and about people struggling to do the rightthing, and sometimes failing. He writes with his heart and his head and with a sheer ballsy velocity youdon't come across very often.
— Kevin Moffett, author of Further Interpretations of RealLifeEvents and The Silent History

With clear, exacting prose Kevin Fortuna presents damaged yet indelible characters grappling withshame, pain, and darkness as they teeter on the brink. One gets the sense that these men and womenare only hanging on by a thread, and Fortuna triumphs by refusing to let us look away.
— Skip Horack, Stegner Fellow and award-winning author of The Southern Cross and The EdenHunter

Fortuna's people defy life by living, and suck every last breath out of a deflated balloon. They areexhilarating people with fully lived lives, expertly drawn. Fortuna's people are people you'd want toknow, whose lives you may well admire. They may even be you.
— Mark Warren, Executive Editor of Esquire

Editorial Reviews

The mostly Irish American characters in Kevin Fortuna's The Dunning Man (Lavender Ink) should know better by now. That they don't (repeating their trespasses again and again) is what makes them so compelling and all too real. Using mostly the seedy corners of Atlantic City as his backdrop, Fortuna captures what it's like to have one's luck run dry. These characters may be the architects of their own disasters, but you also get the sense Fortuna is giving them one last roll of the dice.

Parade Magazine

Kevin Fortuna's debut story collection...is a great new exemplar of hard-boiled serious literature...Fortuna's characters careen and collide their way through eventful nights and somehow remain standing. Voice and character are the strongest suits in these stories, though some...have satisfyingly complex plots that pay off with suspense and surprise.

AskMen

The Dunning Man comprises six stories, each pitting one of Fortuna's colorful antiheroes ...against the world in which he lives. It's gritty, vice-filled, and sometimes violent, but also incredibly honest and redemptive.

BuzzFeed Books

If you're like us, it may have been a while since you read a short-story collection—much less enjoyed reading one.... Which is why we were so pleased to come across the writing of Kevin Fortuna....Breaking from the current custom of studious remove and mannered characters in airless settings, the stories in The Dunning Man pulse with life, and the men and women who figure in them are real people, regular people, working people. People like you and me.

Esquire Magazine

The Dunning Man comprises six stories, each pitting one of Fortuna's colorful antiheroes ...against the world in which he lives. It's gritty, vice-filled, and sometimes violent, but also incredibly honest and redemptive.

2014-08-13
A variety of narrative perspectives, most drenched in alcohol, enhance this debut collection of six stories. Practically every character in these stories is Irish-American—except for the improbably varied cast of entertainers in the long, last title story—and most of them drink, mostly to excess. It is thus something of a marvel, if not a contradiction, that the observations remain so sharp, the prose so precise, as the narrators slosh toward oblivion or awaken to horrendous hangovers. The whole notion of narrative perspective proves tricky throughout, as the plots unfold through the eyes of narrators who initially present themselves as observers but often become the pivotal characters, revealing as much or more about themselves in the process of telling about others. In the opening "Dead," for example, Connor stereotypes those making a pilgrimage to Atlantic City as a way of distinguishing himself: "I tell myself I am different from these bus people. I have a job, and a profession to which I will eventually return. I've eaten in five-star restaurants. I've slept with a Lands' End model—twice." Connor (or at least someone with the same name) returns in the last story, now a property speculator in Atlantic City in a building where a gangsta rapper throws all-night orgies, a deadbeat entertainer with a short-term lease keeps a tiger, and a single mother provides a slim possibility of romance and redemption. "Weddings and Burials" offers a subtle, emotionally complex story about an Irish wedding that somehow encapsulates a previous generation's marriages, relationships and missed opportunities, while "Sullapalooza" presents an even more raucous celebration, narrated in the second person by the black-sheep drunk brother of the town's powerful fixer. This short collection seems like a sampler platter from a writer who may well have a fictional feast in him.

Kirkus Reviews