Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

Oct 27, 2010

Paul rated it

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Shelves: short-stories-are-your-friends

ON HAVING HAD IT WITH DAVID FOSTER WALLACE FOR THE MOMENT

Given that most of my goodread friends love DFW with immoderate, alarming gusto, this requires some kind of explanation.

There’s a direct parallel between DFW and James Joyce. They both tended perpetually towards the encyclopaedic. They were utterly indifferent to audience expectation - even to the modernist, avantgardish audience they themselves created. Their main books are vast, oceanic, limitless affairs. They...more

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Jul 30, 2008

Erikaaaa rated it

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Recommended to Erikaaaa by: Paul

If there are 12 things i appreciate in the world, i'm sure one of them is repetition for effect and i don't care if it's in music or in humor, anything. I'm not saying that's DFW's best element here, but it's done sooooo masterfully and it just works for me. I love tight and elegant prose, duh, but if you're going to be neurotic then just go all the way and DO IT and don't stop, keep going, it's so good and getting better.

From a linguistic view, yep, it's astounding. The subtleties o...more

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Apr 06, 2007

sarah rated it

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Recommends it for: English majors

Shelves: shortstories

Usually when some undergraduate English major brings up DFW to me at a keg party I tend auto-file them under "douchebag." Because, let's be honest people - Infinite Jest was profoundly not good. But everything that's irritating about Wallace's thoroughly self-aware postmodern writing style is somehow much more stomachable in smaller bites. Brief Interviews has its highs and lows - the quality is extremely variant between the pieces - but when it's on, it is ON. In fact, Brief Interview...moreUsually when some undergraduate English major brings up DFW to me at a keg party I tend auto-file them under "douchebag." Because, let's be honest people - Infinite Jest was profoundly not good. But everything that's irritating about Wallace's thoroughly self-aware postmodern writing style is somehow much more stomachable in smaller bites. Brief Interviews has its highs and lows - the quality is extremely variant between the pieces - but when it's on, it is ON. In fact, Brief Interviews holds moments where Wallace is actually transcendant.

If you're looking to buy or borrow this book, take my advice : do not read the whole thing. First, read the interviews. They're the clear highlights, with the last one being, in my opinion, one of the best pieces of short fiction written in the last couple of decades. If you're feeling it at that point, then dive in to the other ones - Octet is a particularly strong, as is Suicide as a Sort of Present. A good percentage of the stories use painfully self aware "tricks" to "challenge" the modern concepts of narration, character, structure, etc -- "tricks" that are now being replicated unendingly in sophomore fiction writing seminars across the world, I'm sure. It's not particularly clever and for the most part detracts from the writing. But in the Interviews, Wallace manages the dialectic narration style more or less beautifully, somehow capturing both the worst and best traits of his characters. These men are hideous; even worse, they are hideously realistic, and I often found my pity or empathy overwelming my initial stomach-churning disgust. These portraits are intimate and familiar; it's like listening in on a conversation of an ex-boyfriend.

The last interview is off-the-charts good, mostly because it manages to be both grotesque and quite funny. This is the DFW that people obsess over - tossing around references, satirizing modern society, soaking dialogue in irony. That story alone is worth the price of the book.

If you end up loving this book - more power to you. DFW has definitely done things to earn his widespread critical acclaim. Just don't name-drop him to pick up girls at parties, because that makes you an asshole.(less)

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Sep 03, 2009

Hannah Messler rated it

It's official: my heart is broken for David Foster Wallace. Anyone who thinks they don't like him is, I'm sorry, an ass. This shit is just not up for debate.

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Nov 24, 2011

Ry rated it

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DFW's book of short stories are seemingly simultaneously devoted to reinventing the form of the short story as we know it and upholding the virtues of great literature that have been valued for so long.

If I could use one word to describe this whole collection, the word I would use would be, "honest." Because that's what this book is. Pure honesty. The ways in which Wallace captures the voices of the characters, the way he evokes the manners of speech of current-day citizens...more

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Oct 22, 2010

Mark rated it

Shelves: fiction

Of DFW's three short story collections, this is the one I enjoy the least. It's certainly his most thematically coherent collection, but perhaps that's part of my problem with it. Though the stories are almost unbelievably well-written and ingenious (this is DFW, after all), many of them either have this aura of impersonality about them or (in the case of the monologues, of which there are many) they are so insularly personal as to feel claustrophobic.

"The Depressed Person,"...moreOf DFW's three short story collections, this is the one I enjoy the least. It's certainly his most thematically coherent collection, but perhaps that's part of my problem with it. Though the stories are almost unbelievably well-written and ingenious (this is DFW, after all), many of them either have this aura of impersonality about them or (in the case of the monologues, of which there are many) they are so insularly personal as to feel claustrophobic.

"The Depressed Person," for instance, suffers from the former problem in that it is a completely objective, thoroughly exhausting third-person study of a clinically depressed woman and the ways in which she deals with her depression. The story is not sympathetic to this woman's problems, nor is it uncaring or callous. It is instead a straightforward reportage of facts and incidents. Now, I could recognize DFW's writerly skills within this story as I read it, but the only thing that actually forced me to read all the way to the end of the story was my respect for DFW. If anyone else had written the exact same story, I wouldn't have finished it.

"Adult World (I)" and "Adult World (II)" is another set of stories that disappointed me. "(I)," like "A Depressed Person," was written in the same kind of detached, third-person way, and "(II)," the conclusion to the story, was written in outline form--as if DFW couldn't even be bothered to finish the story. Again, I found much to value within this story set but it nonetheless left me feeling a bit cold.

Then there are the stories that, as with "Everything Is Green," strike me as fragments of stories or set-pieces rather than true stories: "Death Is Not the End," "The Devil Is a Busy Man," "Think," etc.

"Tri-Stan: I Sold Sissee Nar to Ecko" is now the second DFW story (joining "Mr. Squishy") that I could not force myself to finish reading. Unlike "Mr. Squishy," which was mindnumbing, "Tri-Stan" was simply impenetrable to me. And for a story that's only 20 pages long to be impenetrable is pretty incredible. I'm sure it's some DFW fan's favorite story of his, but I could not make it past the third page.

But the collection nonetheless contains stories that knocked my socks off: "Forever Overhead" (a second-person story about you, on your thirteenth birthday, deciding to jump off the high dive at the public pool), "Signifying Nothing" (the oddly hilarious story of a twenty-something guy who suddenly remembers his father waggling his dick in front of his face when he was a little kid, and the fallout when he tries to remind his father of the incident), "Brief Interview #42" (the oddly moving story of the interviewee's father, who was a restroom attendant), "Octet" (a series of pop-quizzes, culminating in a final quiz in which DFW tries to explain what he was doing with this particular set of quizzes, and how he feels he failed, and how this final quiz is his way of re-attempting to do what he was trying to do with the "real" quizzes), "Brief Interview #59" (in which a man, presumably from some Soviet-era Eastern Bloc country, explains one of his childhood masturbatory fantasies, and the ever-more-complex way in which he had to conceive it in order to make it work, involving as it did his manipulation of the space-time continuum), "On His Deathbed, Holding Your Hand, the Acclaimed New Young Off-Broadway Playwright's Father Begs a Boon" (a monologue of paternal repulsion, which for some reason reminded me of my friend Drew Hayes's story about the birth of his daughter, as recounted in his posthumous autobiography Deathreats, even though Drew's story is, of course, far more loving).

And then there's "Brief Interview #20," perhaps the most complex and layered story in the collection, and about which I cannot quite parse how I feel. The interviewee tells his interviewer about this beautiful college girl he slept with, whom he describes as a "quote Granola Cruncher, or post-Hippie, New Ager, what have you," and then he tells the interviewer the story the girl told him after they'd had sex, about how she was abducted by a man who intended to rape and kill her. This being the last "Brief Interview" in the book, which had hitherto been filled with brief interviews with truly hideous men, one expects this interviewee to be equally repulsive--and in many ways he is. But there's something more to him, as evidenced by his emotional reaction to the girl's story--or so he tells his interviewer, anyway. Of course, his interaction with his interviewer is hostile, particularly in the end, so he never quite rises above his hideousness. But there's something there. I don't know. An amazing story, and proof why everything DFW writes is worth reading.(less)

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Jul 03, 2009

Davis rated it

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Recommends it for: Fans of good contemporary literature

Recommended to Davis by: Brandon Daley

Shelves: humorous, philosophy

I wanted to love David Foster Wallace. I mean, I wanted to just totally hang off of every single word...and I did...for about half of the stories in 'Brief Interviews With Hideous Men'. Around 1/2 of the stories are utterly amazing. The prose is dense and luxurious, with a vocabulary that is surely unparalleled in contemporary literature. The opulent use of footnotes may annoy some, I actually found the effect they had to be quite humorous especially in 'The Depressed Person'. The tales which sh...moreI wanted to love David Foster Wallace. I mean, I wanted to just totally hang off of every single word...and I did...for about half of the stories in 'Brief Interviews With Hideous Men'. Around 1/2 of the stories are utterly amazing. The prose is dense and luxurious, with a vocabulary that is surely unparalleled in contemporary literature. The opulent use of footnotes may annoy some, I actually found the effect they had to be quite humorous especially in 'The Depressed Person'. The tales which share the namesake of this collection are absolutely knee-slappingly hilarious.

All the stories in this collection seem to follow a common theme, and this may or may not be on base: deeper analysis of everyday events. Maybe not every story fits this mold perfectly, or maybe at all, but that is one of the largest things I pulled from it. Bizarre sexuality, oddly enough, is one of the other recurrent themes. This is included in both "Adult World' and the title pieces of the collection.

However, Mr. Wallace also has a tendency of droning on and on after he has already lost his audience and that is why this book cannot get 5 stars, no matter how much I enjoyed his prose in parts or how well written the entire collection is. Stories such as 'Tri-Stan: I Sold Sissee Nar to Ecko" were just flat out boring after you comprehended the idea behind them. I mean on the surface 'Tri-Stan' is a hilarious idea. It is essentially an MTV Arthurian tale; sounds wonderful, yet this is the only story I could not make it all the way through. A few of the other sections also contain this same tediousness, yet I soldiered through them. 'On His Deathbed, Holding Your Hand, the Acclaimed New Young Off-Broadway Playwright's Father Begs a Boon' is another tale with a wonderfully funny idea (a father hating his son) beat to the ground with repetitious phrasing and long, drawn-out sentences.

The highlights of the collection are the title pieces and "Adult World (1)" and "Adult World (2)". In fact, the last segment of 'Hideous Men' is seriously moving. I genuinely became immersed in the 3rd-hand experience that was being told. Wallace had a way of making it entirely real and human in a way that no other writer could have made that subject matter At once he tackles male frivolity and dismissive/degrading attitudes towards women, love, rape, and the nature of psychosis. Truly, truly wonderful stuff.

The 'Adult World' segments are particularly interesting as well. The entire time I kept predicting the ending, and Wallace foreshadowed the hell out of it...yet, I was wrong! The actual ending comes completely out of the left and it is quite hilarious. These two segments certainly the deliver the 'bizarre sexuality' theme that is carried all throughout the collection. The 2nd part of 'Adult World' is written, I think/guess/calculate/, almost as a guide to a writer if they were going to be writing the 2nd part, and reads like a screen play. It took me a page or two to get into, but when I figured out the abbreviations, all was well.

In the story titled 'Octet', Wallace did an extremely interesting thing which I've never seen done before. He talks to the reader, as if they are writing the conclusion to this little 'Pop quiz' segment of the collection. I can't explain it and give it justice, but essentially, it it Wallace second-guessing himself and explaining it in a hilariously ingenious manner.

David Foster Wallace is definitely not for everyone, in fact, I'm not even sure if he is right for me yet. In fact, from what I have heard, this is not one of his strongest literary outings (which made me quite incredulous, because it is truly a great collection). However, I do know that I am going to try and read 'Infinite Jest' after reading this because I was essentially just trying to gauge out Mr. Wallace's skill. If you feel like being literally challenged, read this book. It isn't a bad idea to have dictionary.com pulled up, or a Merriam-Webster sitting right next to you either. I didn't do this, but I'm thinking maybe I should have. (less)

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Sep 16, 2008

Jen3n rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: literature, short-stories

The first time I logged in this book way back when I opened my Goodreads account and was just throwing everything I could remember ever picking up to read at the Goodreads wall in an attempt to not leave anything out. At that time I didn't write a review of this book. Not for any particular reason; I didn't write reviews for most of the books I have in my library. A couple for some I really loathed, one or two for some I liked, a couple for some that I (for one reason or another) felt the nee...moreThe first time I logged in this book way back when I opened my Goodreads account and was just throwing everything I could remember ever picking up to read at the Goodreads wall in an attempt to not leave anything out. At that time I didn't write a review of this book. Not for any particular reason; I didn't write reviews for most of the books I have in my library. A couple for some I really loathed, one or two for some I liked, a couple for some that I (for one reason or another) felt the need to justify. That's it.

But now that DFW is dead ... no, well, shit: that's tacky. I mean, he is and that's awful and everything but that shouldn't be why I'm writing the review. It's the reason I re-read the book today and it's the reason I replaced my missing original copy at the bookstore last night, but it shouldn't be one of those band-wagon-y "oh I loved Infinate Jest he was like a god to me why did it happen how awful" sort of reviews. Because, while I liked Infinite Jest, I never thought he was a god, and I think I know exactly how "this" happened. But I don't want this review to be anything even approaching the band wagon. Like I said. I want it to be about Brief Interviews with Hideous Men.

The book is okay. Not fantastic. Not awful. I have to say, if I'm being honest, that the Mister Wallace (at least in the example of this specific book) didn't write actual stories. I don't know that he would have been able to if he tried. Or was forced at gunpoint. What he made was more like word paintings. Unconnected and layered and taxing and lovely. Sometimes lovely in their ugliness. From a technical standpoint, he could craft a sentence better than almost anyone alive today.

Sorry, that was crass. But I'm not deleting that sentence because it's true.

He did things (literarily speaking) that you are never, ever supposed to do. Like (in this specific book, at any rate) tell most of the narrative in footnotes, or make an entire section in out line form shorthand, or have interview transcripts where all the questions are removed. Everyone called it "postmodernism" and talked about how funny he was and how clever and new. I don't think the things he wrote in this book were, bar maybe one of the pieces, funny even in the slightest. The funny part, the truly and totally funny thing about DFW was that a lot of the things he wrote were so full of despair and bleak, unblinking irony that it felt, to me, that he was laughing at us, not with us. And THERE is where I found The Funny.

There's some beautiful craftsmanship in this book. The turn of phrase here or there is tap-dead-perfect. I wish I wrote like this some days. It makes me wish that I wrote period.

But I hated most of the content. Which is why I gave this book three stars. What it delivered (in my opinion) was shit; HOW it delivered it, however, was pure gold.

So it all equaled-out.
(less)

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Oct 20, 2008

Travis rated it

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Shelves: to-finish-reading, fiction-general

David Foster Wallace is one of those "love him or hate him" kind of guys. His fans love his quirky stories, textural experimentations, and insights on the human condition. His critics, however, think he's too full of himself and egotistical. After attempting to read "Infinite Jest" last year, I was of the latter group. But after reading "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again" and trying "Infinite Jest" again, I now consider myself a fan.

"...moreDavid Foster Wallace is one of those "love him or hate him" kind of guys. His fans love his quirky stories, textural experimentations, and insights on the human condition. His critics, however, think he's too full of himself and egotistical. After attempting to read "Infinite Jest" last year, I was of the latter group. But after reading "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again" and trying "Infinite Jest" again, I now consider myself a fan.

"Brief Interviews..." is not my favorite DFW book, but it's still a great collection of short stories. Yes, it can sometimes difficult, but if you take the time to really read them you will find some great, and hillarious, stories.

The title story is a series of fictional interviews with men who have some major issues. I've read reviews accusing Wallace of being a sexist, but I don't think he's intentionally glorifying misogyny. Hence the word "hideous" in the title. THEY'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE OUTSTANDING CITIZENS!!!

One of my favorite stories is "The Depressed Person." It is a difficult read because the prose often reads too much like a philsophical textbook than a story. However, it's actually an interesting story about a woman suffering from depression and the effect it has on the people around her.

Another good one is "Octet" which starts off as a series of pop quizzes featuring different scenarios, but then, in a metafictional move, focuses on the author's original intention for the piece and how it didn't work out the way he planned. Judging by your tast, such "breaking the fourth" wall moves like this are either groundbreaking or cliched.

Of course there are flaws. Besides it being sometimes really difficult, some of the stories don't really go anywhere. For example, "Death is Not the End" is not really a story but a very wordy description of a writer relaxing by the pool. When I came to the end of that piece I couldn't help but think, "So what?"

Despite its flaws, "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men" is a challenging yet hillarious book that may not be for everyone, but nevertheless displays Wallace's great talent.(less)

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Nov 19, 2007

Scott rated it

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Shelves: essays

Well, if I take the last part of "my review / what I learned from this book" seriously, I'd need to say that I learned to not give away anything for free, but rather put an arbitrary price on the item if I wanted to actually get rid of said item. That's what I learned from The Devil is a Busy Man.

I learned that putting a "Q." without actually typing the questions and then only giving the reader the answer to said question is a pretty good gimmick. I learned that ...more

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Nov 09, 2011

Jennifer rated it

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Shelves: abandoned, short-stories

Ugh. Wow, this is just... bad. By page 230, I had had enough. The thing is, it's as if he decided he had to use every trick up his literary sleeve and instead of relying on the ingenuity and originality of his stories, he mucks it all up by trying too hard to be "unique." There are the brief interviews, which in and of themselves are interesting (saving this reviewer from having to give the author of one of my favorite books of the year one measly star). Then there are several short st...more

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Jul 06, 2007

Eleanor rated it

Recommends it for: men who aren't feminists

Shelves: disappointments, recommended-by-a-friend, americana

I think I seriously offended a friend when I told him that this book made me want, at times, to hurl it across the room. That I never did tells you something. David Foster Wallace is clearly an arrogant, egotistical prick -- I'm sure if I met him I'd detest him, find his "I'm smarter than you" demeanor even slimier in person than in print.

Still, he is clearly a gifted writer, and when he lets his bag of tricks (many of which I find offensive) drop away what remains is bril...more

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Nov 26, 2008

Eli rated it

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Shelves: short-stories

So, so much to like about this. Around halfway through I started wondering whether I was still enjoying it, and then a couple of pieces really shook me, moved me more than anything I've read in a long time. There is such a considered rawness to DFW's writing, this emotional intelligence and brutality of style.

There were a couple of stories I was bored by and one (Tri-Stan: I Sold Sissee Nar to Ecko) that I skipped after reading the first page because I just hated it. The repetition,...more

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Mar 23, 2009

Laura rated it

Shelves: fiction

I just finished reading Brief Interviews With Hideous Men. This book is some kind of a literary masterpiece yeah. I just didn’t enjoy reading it that much.
I understand what this book is supposed to be, and it’s very eye-opening to note what he is doing/trying to do/succeeding to do in any one of these stories, but it is simply not enjoyable to read. It is rather like– as a child does in one of the earlier stories in this book, the only story I enjoyed– finding yourself forced to leap off o...moreI just finished reading Brief Interviews With Hideous Men. This book is some kind of a literary masterpiece yeah. I just didn’t enjoy reading it that much.
I understand what this book is supposed to be, and it’s very eye-opening to note what he is doing/trying to do/succeeding to do in any one of these stories, but it is simply not enjoyable to read. It is rather like– as a child does in one of the earlier stories in this book, the only story I enjoyed– finding yourself forced to leap off of a high-dive. Post-leap, there are several different ways to consider yourself as having grown somehow, but during the dive it is not at all entertaining. You may find yourself feeling harassed, terrified, bored, or any other of a number of unpleasant emotions, and when you are finished you will cry GOD I AM GLAD THAT IS OVER and you will go on living some kind of expanded life and cease to think much about said high-dive UNLESS you are one of those people who find themselves compelled constantly to do unpleasant things and therefore suddenly find yourself compelled, through this unpleasant childhood experience most other people are busy forgetting, to become a world-class high-dive leaper.
The big thing is this: yes, it is clever to be all sorts of postmodern, and yes, those who can pull it off well are all geniuses and deserve much praise– and DFW can pull it off well, frequently– but this is still not the kind of thing that books were invented for. They’re not enjoyable as short stories. I don’t care if they are a ‘delight’ and a ‘harassment of the short story form’. I am not going to want to read short stories if the writer of the short stories wrote them in order to harass me. In the same way, though I would credit laudable creativity to an artist whose form of sculpture involved filling a room with knives, I would not particularly enjoy being in that room, and would instead feel a degree of tension of be a little bit upset.
The only one of these stories I actually enjoyed was ‘Forever Overhead,’ a brilliant piece about a boy on a high-dive. I think it is stunning. Other sections– the first of the ‘Hideous Men’ sections, for instance, or ‘Church Not Made With Hands’, a story about a young family in a tragic situation– are wonderful also, but are, in the case of the first, not as easy to enjoy, or, in the case of the second, so buried into the abrasive unpleasantness of the rest of this excellently-written book that by the time the reader gets to it he or she is simply too mentally exhausted to even recognize that this story is well-done and pleasant instead of abrasive. Putting the book down does not help– remembering prior sections can so trouble or bore that reading onward simply becomes as unpleasant as they were, regardless of whether or not the bit you are actually reading is itself unpleasant. The writing gets to be its least-bearable when he starts to write totally ironically about how stupid it is to always be totally ironic. I don’t know if it’s possible to sarcastically criticise sarcasm without sounding like a jerk, even if you ARE DFW.
The fact is this: when DFW wants to make you experience, as in ‘The Depressed Person,’ what it is like to enter the mind of a severely depressed person, he does it in such a way and with such accuracy and force that there is practically no room for the reader to reflect. That’s how genuine it gets. It is the same, though less so, with the bit about an honored playwright’s father who, on his death bed, insists on going on and on a bout how much he hates his talented son. DFW simply presents these relentless neverending trauma-filled paragraphs one after another as if he is pounding the reader’s head with a bloody brick, and the reader must shout ‘God, this is spectacular, DFW! Now please get the brick out of my eye!’ The question we should all be asking is NOT ‘Is this good?‘ The question should be, ‘Am I having a good time reading this?‘ It is a totally inescapable fact that wholly unpleasant things are rarely saved for posterity. Even upsetting or pathologically-focused books, like Crime and Punishment, are saved because there is something accessible or somehow pleasant about the reading experience that makes at least some of us refrain from hurling it out of a window. There is barely any such redeeming factor here.
So. DFW is some kind of literary god. But it is now perfectly self-evident to me why more writers are not running around trying to be as horrifically postmodern as he was. It is soul-crushingly unhappy to be so postmodern. I do not mean to be crass, but these stories make it clear that DFW understands human agony and disgrace and depression. And he killed himself. So, I say this: it is okay not to like this book. Read it and perhaps admire it, but it is okay to dislike it. The reason you dislike it so much is that you have understood what DFW was trying to do. And the thing he was trying to do was not to write an accessible, edifying book, but to conduct ‘a harassment of the short story form,’ which is the opposite of what short stories are for. One does not go around trying to become a successful baker by baking breads which are a harassment of the mouth. There is a reason for this.(less)

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Jan 26, 2012

Michael Moats rated it

From Trade Paperbacks:

THE GOOD PEOPLE OVER AT THE RUMPUS recently published some thoughts I had on David Foster Wallace's "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men."

The piece, which ran in their Last Book I Loved series, is something of an advice column, borne out of my strained efforts to have a casual conversation about such a strange book.

That last bit will also require explanation, if they aren’t already aware, which prompts that face people tend to make when

...more

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Aug 28, 2011

Alanmartinson rated it

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Brief Interviews with Hideous Men is the worst kind of writing. It stems from narcissism in both his writing and his story-telling techniques, which are all for the author's gratification, and certainly not the reader's. While complex writing can be the result of complex issues or emotions, BIWHM inserts complex and repetitive writing for no apparent reason other than the author's gratification. Perhaps it is a result of my lack of reading skill (although I have always done well on reading co...more

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Jul 30, 2011

Sara added it

This collection of stories has some real gems: funny, self-referential, and full of familiar types who you know you met ("We couldn't possibly have met the same guy, right?!"). I personally love the meta-fiction aspects of much of Wallace's writing, as it puts a spotlight on what it means to tell a story and how we all have these stories and constructs of self running around inside our heads; sometimes reading Wallace makes me feel like I need psychotherapy, but in a good way, a "...more

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Jul 08, 2011

Zach rated it

There is no denying DFW's genius, particularly in the area of psychology, where many of his stories read like case studies (albeit clever, humorous ones) more than fiction. To me, sometimes the stories rambled on longer than they needed to, rehashing the same point in admittedly (subtly) different ways, driving home an idea, but driving it to the point that I was tired of it. DFW also writes with a deep detachment from his subjects. I am all for detachment. I love detachment. I think there ...more

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Feb 05, 2011

Anita Dalton rated it

Shelves: fiction, literary-fiction, short-story-collection, books-we-own

I wanted to love this book. I wanted to love David Foster Wallace. I bought this book after I had a dream. I dreamt of a strong-jawed man with long hair and later, when I saw the tail end of the movie based on this book, I Googled "David Foster Wallace" and realized he was the man I had dreamed about. So because I am sort of daft, I felt this was a sign.

It wasn't and I feel sort of odd that I didn't love this book from a literary icon.

It had its moments. "...moreI wanted to love this book. I wanted to love David Foster Wallace. I bought this book after I had a dream. I dreamt of a strong-jawed man with long hair and later, when I saw the tail end of the movie based on this book, I Googled "David Foster Wallace" and realized he was the man I had dreamed about. So because I am sort of daft, I felt this was a sign.

It wasn't and I feel sort of odd that I didn't love this book from a literary icon.

It had its moments. "The Depressed Person" for me was the best story in this collection. I think it was the best story for me because, as a completely depressed person who feels a particularly deep horror about testing people with the depths of my loathing self-involvement, it resonated a bit closely. Despite the fact that this story has a long, droning quality, it suited the sort of long, droning quality of persistent, intractable depression.

"Octet" was too meta, too... something. It seemed too self-conscious, forcing me to engage with the writer when I just wanted to engage with the story. I felt like a meta-brick was thrown at my face as I read it.

The first few stories with the hideous men flowed well. But then we got to the later interviews with hideous men and the droned on, piling on when brevity would have made the point even better. I got lost at times, wondering if the men were really hideous, if they were, in some sense, just lost because the narrative was lost, meandering.

Take this sentence, for example: "The fact that the Inward Bound never consider that it's the probity and thrift of the re-- to occur to them that they themselves have themselves become the distillate of everything about the culture they deride and define themselves as opposing, the narcissism, the materialism and complacency and unexamined conformity -- nor the irony that they blithe teleology of this quote impending New Age is exactly the same cultural permission-slip that Manifest Destiny was, or the Reich or the dialectic of the proletariat or the Cultural Revolution -- all the same."

I fancy that I have enough intelligence that if I have to read a sentence more than three times then there is something going on that is deliberately distracting from clear meaning, that perhaps a clear meaning is not what is needed here and while I understand this style of writing in a manner that defies basic understanding appeals to people who find meaning in a disjointed narrative, I am not one of those people.

It feels bad to want to love a book and not be able to do it. (less)

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Aug 01, 2010

The Awdude rated it

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This is DFW's funniest collection, also his most experimental. The range and variety of humor in these stories is astounding, schizophrenically comprehensive, and at its best laugh out loud hilarious. The same could be said about his multifaceted experimentation; he pretty much empties out the tool kit and uses everything he's got. It takes some (a lot) of patience on the reader's part, especially for stories like "Octet" and "Church Not Made with Hands," the latter of which ...more

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Feb 26, 2010

Mia rated it

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Definitely won't be most people's cup of tea. It's several (I didn't count, but maybe 30? 40?) different interviews with various people (not all just men, actually) where you do not hear the interviewer's questions, only the responses. Each interview has a completely unique voice (because people have unique voices) and some of them are so incredibly fantastic that you have stop a minute and just admire the fact that an author so brilliant as DFW can completely get inside the head of another huma...more

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Jan 25, 2010

Kat rated it

If ever there was a more fitting title for a series of shorts, I'm not aware of it.

David Foster Wallace quickly became one of my favorite writers after I first picked up this book on the recommendations of one of the clerks at City Lights bookstore in San Francisco. DFW makes you think, makes you sad, makes you angry, and makes you shrug...a lot. He's so good at capturing the ugliest part of the human condition, and those who have gone too far over the deep end, on paper in a way th...more

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Sep 24, 2009

Stop added it · review of another edition

Read the STOP SMILING review/essay about the film adaptation of Brief Interviews with Hideous Men:

In John Krasinski’s film of Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, many of the Interviews are conducted at a desk, in front of a bare wall, with a microphone and pitcher of water — like a table read, really, which makes sense given that Krasinski’s first exposure to David Foster Wallace’s stories came as an undergrad taking part in a staged reading of the monologue-length pieces. Mak...more

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Jun 28, 2009

Greg Brown rated it

Shelves: favorites

This (along with "Good People") is probably the best introduction to DFW's fiction that I've found, featuring pretty-short stories in a bunch of different styles and voices. You're pretty much guaranteed to find one that you'll fall in love with, like one of the titular interviews or his second-person voice in "Forever Overhead":

Happy Birthday. Your thirteenth is important. Maybe your first really public day. Your thirteenth is the chance for people to recognize t

...more

This (along with "Good People") is probably the best introduction to DFW's fiction that I've found, featuring pretty-short stories in a bunch of different styles and voices. You're pretty much guaranteed to find one that you'll fall in love with, like one of the titular interviews or his second-person voice in "Forever Overhead":

Happy Birthday. Your thirteenth is important. Maybe your first really public day. Your thirteenth is the chance for people to recognize that important things are happening to you.

Things have been happening to you for the past half year. You have seven hairs in your left armpit now. Twelve in your right. Hard dangerous spirals of brittle black hair. Crunchy, animal hair. There are now more of the hard curled hairs around your privates than you can count without losing track. Other things. Your voice is rich and scratchy and moves between octaves without any warning. Your face has begun to get shiny when you don't wash it. And two weeks of a deep and frightening ache this past spring left you with something dropped down from inside: your sack is now full and vulnerable, a commodity to be protected. Hefted and strapped in tight supporters that stripe your buttocks red. You have grown into a new fragility.

DFW can flip into this poetic-prose mode when he wants to, but rarely does. Instead, he tries to carve at the truth using words as people speak them, and only occasionally as they don't. One essay is written as if a greek myth transplanted to late-90s Los Angeles, which takes a few pages to get used to. Most of the essays don't require such deciphering, and the ones that do try to pay off such effort through laughs or revelation.

Most of the pieces - especially the interviews - are utterly magnetic and horrifying in a way. They're all interviews with "hideous men," something that becomes clear in the telling of each. But what you don't expect is how each essay manages to hit close to home. I can recognize parts of myself in some of these writings, parts that weren't fully elucidated or realized until after they're read.

That makes them troubling, but it's what they describe that makes them horrific. They're full of moral traps, attempts at being Good that end up tragically backfiring in a way that's often masked by their intended aims. You're left with somewhat of confusion, a mixture of feelings that have to be worked out by yourself. But it's a good confusion - if that makes any kind of sense - in that you feel for once as if you're striking the motherload, uncovering the disease that produces all the aches and pains and symptoms that is the human condition.

This sounds all kind of overwrought and melodramatic and it probably is. But reading these stories, especially in close succession, is one hell of a trip. You end up looking at yourself (literally "your self") differently.

I can't recommend it enough.

(less)

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Jun 14, 2009

Gilly rated it

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Wallace takes on a range of defense mechanisms and fantasies that are built into our society and that prevent us from loving others purely and generously. He pokes fun at surgical enhancement and irony, and he shows how twisted people become when they try to replace experience with sensation, feeling with feeling good. Most of all, he forces us to confront the ways we use others to sustain our own sense of self-worth.

The writing is full of what could seem like meta-fictional gimmick...more

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Mar 25, 2010

Michael rated it

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. David Foster Wallace hasn’t met a sentence, a story or a thought he can’t overwrite. I read Brief Interviews with Hideous Men to prepare for the lecture at the 92nd Street Y by James Wood. Even Wood admitted in his lecture to thumbing through the story to see when it would end and surprised that, yep, Wallace needed ten more pages to finish his story. There is something insecure about the writing. Its as if every thought must be written out three times in an attempt to get it right. It’s as if ...more David Foster Wallace hasn’t met a sentence, a story or a thought he can’t overwrite. I read Brief Interviews with Hideous Men to prepare for the lecture at the 92nd Street Y by James Wood. Even Wood admitted in his lecture to thumbing through the story to see when it would end and surprised that, yep, Wallace needed ten more pages to finish his story. There is something insecure about the writing. Its as if every thought must be written out three times in an attempt to get it right. It’s as if Wallace is saying to us over and over, “do you get it?” Yes, we do. Thank you move on. Stories like The Depressed Person or Adult World have an almost unbearable level of obsessiveness about them. Though Wallace roots this in the characters, do we really need thirty pages, when we get it after four? Most of the collection feels obsessive, unruly, and unnecessary.
The title refers to a running series of interviews given by presumably the same person Q whose prompts we are never privy too. After a while, each story starts falling into a predictable format. A man monologuing about women towards the end will reveal a fact that turns the story on its head. While this works for the first five, the next hundred and eight feel like overkill. Why someone just didn’t cut them down to the top ten or twenty, I don’t know. The problem with it, besides the fact that most of the endings are obvious from a mile away. For example, the man describing his wife’s rape reveals, at the very end, he was the victim. Any decernable reader will not need this spelled out for them. To lay it on a silver platter shows Foster Wallace’s distrust of his reader. Another example is the graffiti on the bathroom wall the wife from Adultworld remembers. Not only is it hitting the reader over the head, the reader knew what was up with the husband on the first page, why seven pages later is he giving us a little rhyme about a glory hole? The only successful short story is Forever Overhead. There the reader is put to work with an ending that is less ambiguous. It’s a relief in a collection that spells everything out for you.
It’s unavoidable not to bring up misogyny. Woods had an interesting take on Wallace’s relationship to apology: that to ask for forgiveness or to be even aware you should apologize, is releasing yourself- allowing you to commit a deed that will require forgiveness. He referenced the Hideous Interview where a man explains to the woman how he comes on serious in the beginning of the relationship, makes a woman love him, and then leaves.
In the book, there are only three women. The first is the Q in all of the Hideous Men sketches. She is never given any lines. The second The Depressed Person, is trapped in a prison of her mind/body/society and the third is the wife in Adultworld. The one word that unites them all is- permissiveness. In all three cases, the women have things done to them. They never show any sign of agency. The wife in Adultworld has a choice, but it’s strange that Wallace never frames it as that. He frames it in term of an epiphany, and by his definition handily provided in the footnote it’s a growth, a way of becoming and adult. After this epiphany, she buys a vibrator. One may be able to surmise, though of course it’s a bit reductive, that Wallace is saying men are hideous so just go buy a vibrator, but like Woods points out an apology (and this entire book can be read as nothing but an apology) is release. Apologizing is absolving yourself from the crime. By showing how hideous men are there is a certain sense of allowing them to be this way.(less)

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Jul 25, 2011

Tim rated it

I don’t know if there’s anyone who’s had more insight into the modern human mind…or if there is, I don’t think anyone can even come close to articulating it like David Foster Wallace can. Nothing is sacred, and everything is exposed. It was eerie reading his snarky insights on therapy/psychotropic drugs…for obvious reasons. Besides that, even the long winded parts of this book were entertaining. It was fascinating, as I’d noticed with “Infinite Jest”, to see how far his creative mind could stret...more

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May 31, 2011

Jacob Germain rated it

· review of another edition

This is probably the best introduction to DFW and the way he operates. Also a great way to understand the fierce loyalty he inspires in fans. DFW here is at his least pretentious and most forthright in terms of themes, styles, and the structure of his writing. If you want to understand him and know why he's important in the vast landscape of pomo literature, read this book.

Infinite Jest may be more famous, and overall probably has a lot more merit in a lit/academic sense, but Brief In...moreThis is probably the best introduction to DFW and the way he operates. Also a great way to understand the fierce loyalty he inspires in fans. DFW here is at his least pretentious and most forthright in terms of themes, styles, and the structure of his writing. If you want to understand him and know why he's important in the vast landscape of pomo literature, read this book.

Infinite Jest may be more famous, and overall probably has a lot more merit in a lit/academic sense, but Brief Interviews is more human, self-effacing and terrifyingly sincere. Maybe I'm not the best person to write this review, when it comes down to it. DFW writes about an issue that is very deep and important to me, the issue of connection between person to person beyond the trivial social/cultural masks that we apply to prevent said connection because that connection is too terrifying to imagine in any real sense to the point where the average person, if they make that connection at all, they only do so with a handful of people, and usually only in the context of romantic love. It's an idea of sharing, but more importantly embracing the concept that we are all essentially the same people with the same feelings and the same life as every other person we meet, that differences are superfluous and fluctuating and ultimately products of our external world.

What makes this review even less objective/informative is the mere relevance that DFW's experience with depression has to my own experiences. There's a fair story or two in here that makes a valiant (and ongoing, in DFW's work) effort at describing depression, probably for the large portion of the audience who do not understand it. It resonates with me on a certain level to know exactly what he's talking about, exactly the swirling pit of despair and solitude and sheer psychic pain that he refers to on occasion. It's probably useless and pointlessly vain to say that I understand DFW better than most, especially when the obverse is more likely true: he understands me more than most. For a writer to be able to do this, solely through text, is beyond capable imagination. Maybe I'm naive, maybe this is a relatively common experience, every person finds "their" writer, but it still feels magical and important and like such a tremendous and overwhelming relief. I want to hug DFW. I want to find him and thank him and tell him how tremendous this all made me feel. This is really why his suicide is tragic. What does it mean for me, that a person who knows me so well cannot fare in this world any better than I can. I know what it's like to be where he probably was, and I know that probably only the intense desire not to move at all is probably what saves me in those situations.

I don't know. DFW is personally relevant to me, and I can't say whether or not he would be to you. This book isn't too terribly long, and it's nowhere near as dense as Infinite Jest or as complicated as Girl or Broom. It's not as flat-out witty and entertaining as his non-fiction, but it's far more personal. Maybe you'll enjoy it, maybe not. I'm not really sure why you're reading this review, but if you're reading it to decide whether or not to pick up this book, stop reading it and do so.

Ironically (or, probably, mindlessly expected of me) this review follows(ed) the old hamburger method of essay-writing: introduction, body, conclusion (restating the introduction). actually paragraph writing was what it was introduced to and then later extrapolated into essay-writing. I always found/find it fascinating that writing is taught in such a regimented way, from forming letters to words to sentences to paragraphs to 3 page essays to 5 page to theses and so on. It's fascinating to me because Whenever I wrote in these particular definitions or confines or structural bodies, I found myself totally incapable of writing much of anything, and my words ended up devoid of any real semblance of flow, only of structure. It wasn't until, I believe, I started reading tim roger's (frequently in surplus of 15k word) columns on Kotaku that I realized that rambling can be its own significant form of writing, that there's always more to add, and that no information is too irrelevant to work in as an anecdote or something. One thing I did/do appreciate about DFW is his absurd footnotes and end notes and general loose concept of appropriate/informative tangents. Someone said or possibly I read that he used this style to reflect how he specifically thought, which sounds somewhat dull, but entirely meritorious. In places where he doesn't use that style, much of here and a lot of The Pale King, you can tell that he still really really wants to. Or maybe not, maybe I'm just being facetious and boring. I dunno.

Anyway, I stopped trying to write like I learned from english lit classes and started trying to write like I learned in marketing, speech writing, essentially. The concept of being motivational has an entire formula that I don't really remember that well any more, but goes something like, introduce a problem, define the problem, and call for an action to address the problem, with probably a bunch of stuff about alliteration and anecdotes. It's another thing that has helped me write, or at least write significantly without being more rambly and loosely connected to the world among/within (p.s. this is a terrible and obscure reference to a passage in the bible that I learned from a uselessly melodramatic graphic novel that I was forced to read for a lit class that bored me and threw me off of English academic studies forever, revealing to me the interminable excess of academia and the font of pseudo-scientific subjectivism that it [academia] is) me. Hopefully that demonstrates the principle in action here.

I guess the ultimate problem in reviewing this book is that more than anything, I want to be DFW. Specifically I want to achieve what he achieved and make a connection with another (frankly as many as I can get) human being and promote, in some small way, the general increase of applied empathy among people. That's why I started writing, that's why I switched majors, that's why I moved to New Orleans, that's why I volunteer, that's why I do a lot of what I do. I don't talk about it much, mostly for reasons thoroughly examined in the short story "Octet," and I can earnestly only claim a handful of readers, let alone actual connections made. I have far to go, honestly, and much to learn and every other didactic cliche under the sun. That's ultimately why this book is important to me, and really why I hope desperately and with a great portion of my being, that this book will also be important to you. (less)

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Jan 04, 2011

Gottlieb rated it

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Insecurity, Insensitivity and Intensity. Incredible. Inspiring? Idunno.

This was one DFW that I was not so convinced of most of the time, but found some great bits in it as well, especially at the very end - e.g., it isn't easily noticed, how there is a constant weaving of different threads going on in all these stylistically highly heterogenous and innovative (that should go without saying with DFW, of course) stories and sketches, they are not finally resolved or anything, you can't...more

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Jan 12, 2010

Carrie rated it

Shelves: back-burner-partially-through, audiobooks

Listened to part of this one on audiobook and can only remember the part about the boy on the high dive on his birthday and some description of a horizon. Oh, and there was one disturbing vignette where an abusive, but well-spoken man keeps talking about his proclivities (am I right? It's been a while and I can't quiiite remember). The descriptions are intricate and poetic, but I generally dislike poetry, so I felt conflicted while listening to this book. Do I appreciate the way these flowery fr...more

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