Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

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."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.

I thoroughly enjoyed the challenge and reward of Infinite Jest (it took a couple of months to get through, and the next book I read took around 2 days) as well as The Girl With Curious Hair, but never got to grips with A Supposedly Fun Thing, so I was uncertain about how much I would enjoy these Brief Interviews. However, almost all of these stories (the exception being Tri-Stan) had me rapt, they were so brilliant. True there is a lot of repetitiveness, only just on the right side of excessive, but in for instance The Depressed Person it served to heighten the endless reworking of the person's fears. Plus I knew this wasn't going to be an easy read, although I found it to be a breeze compared to Infinite Jest.One thing I've noticed has been missing from the reviews of this has been Wallace's simply awesome use of words. I love the way the words in the story fit exactly as they should, not to say that there aren't surprises and loops where I couldn't help but laugh at the audacity. But in the interviews themselves it's so easy to imagine a real person speaking what's written, the way they're interrupted and interrupt themselves. What's also impressive in the interviews is the lack of words from the interviewer, which I found forced me to concentrate more on the book, and gave me the fun exercise of thinking of the questions; and that only in the last shocking interview do we get anything of the interviewer's persona. And I suppose even Tri-Stan's wordplay was entertaining, although for me it was too long and rambling; Wallace's stories generally work best for me when they're more condensed. This is one book I can't wait to re-read.

Brief Interviews with Hideous Men was a decent set of short stories by David Foster Wallace. It's very different from his novels (Broom of the System, Infinite Jest). Most of the stories are about a man's interaction with a woman. Generally speaking, the man is politically incorrect and very blunt about delicate ideas. If this is your first time reading David Foster Wallace you might be offended. If this is not your first time than many of these stories will seem moderate to his previous works.I think the most important story in the book is 'Octet'. Wallace practically comes right out and asks the reader, "Do you like the work? Do you understand it? Do you know how much time I put into this?" and then proceeds to say that he doesn't even care if you understand it. For the record: I thought the short stories in Octet were pretty bad. The only interesting part of Octet was his confessional.Brief Interviews is a decent read but more for existing fans of Wallace. If you haven't, go read Infinite Jest! For better or worse that is his legacy.

My intro to Wallace came through Harpers Magazine if I remember correctly. I should have expected the rather longer set of "interviews" that I got, and this was really not my issue, or at least, they were OK that they were not so brief, but I just wished there had been more of them; a broader slice of hideousness, I guess.Mind you all, I have not considered whether there is truly a variety of personalities greater than this offering. It's possible that the author deliberately narrowed down the types of despicability to the most basic that there could be, but then again, that really doesn't fit here. The bottom line was that if you like Wallace, you will like this book and even if you don't like it very much, you will more than likely read it through. If you haven't read Wallace, then don't use this review as a guide. Just know that if you like going all the way down a path and seeing the entire thing, even the ugly, the banal, and the boring; if you like a sense of your reading representing the way life sounds and feels to most of us most of the time, it's exactly what you want.

I'd just given up on a book by Michel Houellebecq when Amazon recommended this which turned out to be the perfect anti-dote: short and long rants of superficially sophisticated men trying to hide their selfishness and misogyny through philosophical babble. The book gets too long-winded at times but the portraits are very recognisable and explained to me why I disliked Houellebecq so much.

The writing was too random, scatty for me. Most of it made no sense. Came across as self-indulgent. Disappointing when other (but not all) reviewers rated it highly.

I rarely laugh aloud but I fell off my chair several times at some of the stories. Many are perfect encapsulations of DFW's style of possibly deliberately self conscious discussion, and I found them to be among the best short stories I've read. Think Borges, but with footnotes and a level of vivid capture of the human mindset that few can approach. Deeply sad at times to, and the lines between the author and the narrator are invariably questioned when the author departed in such tragic circumstances. I highly recommend this to anyone - the vision of particularly the male mindset is still so relevant today.

How does he do it? David Foster Wallace was literary innovator par excellence, but it's not tricksnand traps and attempts to be clever. These devices are just increasingly sophisticated weapons to deliver the truth im ways that will double you over when you flinch and wince each time you recognize the monster. The truth.

Mr Wallace died too soon. This book is utterly awesome. Octet, Brief interviews with hideous men (The man with the gammy arm) OMG you can't put this book down. It's insanely addictive.