The varying length of the stories in Brief Interviews with Hideous Men indicate the range of Wallace's writing. Some, like the funny/dark "Death Is Not The End", about a gifted American writer (ha) lounging by his pool in suspended space-time, are no more than two pages long. Others are just paragraphs. By contrast, the title story is a 100-page-long suite of "conversations" with a series of repellent yet pitiable men given to lyrically reminiscing about "the sort of glorious girl whose kiss tastes of liquor when she's had no liquor to drink". The pay-off is that this girl might have been raped and murdered by one of the "hideous men" in question.

Wallace's prose-style is as various as the length, tone and subject matter. Sometime he's like Will Self in his wordy self-confidence. Other times he's as coarsely comedic as Irvine Welsh ("the rawness and tenderness and spanked pink head of his thingie"). Still other times, like in the deft and amusing parody of dictionary-speak, Datum Centurio, the only possible comparison is with a talkative James Joyce after two bottles of champagne. --Sean Thomas