Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
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How many more times do I have to say that David Foster Wallace is required reading?
He’s one of the few authors who I feel is truly original. Nobody did it like him before and nobody has done it like him since. He has a way to pierce your soul in such a specific way; if he used a different word, or put it directly in the flow of the work rather than in his signature footnote, it wouldn’t do the trick.
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men is a hodgepodge collection of 23 short stories, four of which are “Brief Interviews with Hideous Men,” which portray chauvinism through interview transcripts that include the answers but no questions. It’s all very experiential stuff. Most of the time, he hits the bullseye, but even when he doesn’t, there’s still some pearls in there and it’s somehow worth the read.
This collection is truly all over the place. In one chapter, he creates an entire breathtaking, suspenseful story about a 13 year old using the high-dive for the first time. In another, he creates a hypothetical dictionary entry 100 years into the future. My favorite chapters are Octet, a metafictional series of vignettes followed by pop-quizzes for the reader, and The Depressed Person, a first-person narrative of a very deeply depressed person.
David Foster Wallace makes you use your brain and there’s a smug satisfaction when you get in on the wordplay, hidden meaning, character connection, etc. It’s like he’s winking at you through the pages. It’s like he’s proud of you for not just plowing through some thoughtless bullshit and you’re proud of him for giving you something worth thinking about. I give Brief Interviews with Hideous Men 3 out of 5 flames. Maybe you’re confused by that rating after reading how much I love him. I love his writing…but it’s difficult to throw my full recommendation behind this when I only truly loved a portion of it. I respect and encourage the experimental spirit, but there was a decent chunk that I wouldn’t “recommend”.
Check out my other reviews of DFW: A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, Girl with Curious Hair, and Consider the Lobster. For the ego record, I’ve also read Infinite Jest.
