Brief Interviews With Hideous Men (2000) - Plot & Excerpts
A Brief Word on the Famous Interview #20I'm here to air my total ambivalence after having read the final interview (second to last story in the collection) and not knowing what at all to make of the story. Yes, it is very well written and DFW had certainly mastered the interview style by this point in the book. The way that the Hideous Men speak in each of the interviews is quite natural and sounds true from the stories that I've heard many guys tell w/r/t women, sexual encounters etc. And it is also the point of these stories (given that they're Hideous Men) to give voice to misogynistic men and men who struggle severely with relationships with other women, but the last story just did not go down well with me, given what the story seems to imply. Without spoiling the story, there's a woman character that the interviewee tells the story about in which she tells the man a story. But the way she deals with what happens to her seems to make okay a very serious and problematic occurrence in society. Now, I know; I imagine that DFW had much different intentions when he wrote the story, but the implication it makes seems inevitable to me and kind of problematic to be honest. All that aside, the story hit me in this very visceral way; it is fucking powerful. I've always been of the opinion that moral outrage in a story is a good thing, as it incites dialogue among its readers. So I guess I'm trying to say (very long-windedly) that I'm giving the story the highest compliment I could give it. It treads some dangerous ground while wresting a great deal of emotionality from the situation and develops three different complex characters through a single man's monologue. That's some writing skill, that is.It was a good thing that the story left such an impression because there are some stinkers towards the end of the book. I am the first to admit that DFW is not perfect and there are a couple obvious examples of that throughout this collection. But overall, I'm so happy to have sifted through more of the DFW ouvre. It's worth it, if you ever do get the chance.A Brief Conversation with a Friendly Barista‘Next. . . Next!’‘Yeah, sorry. Can you just do a water with ice.’‘Sure man, no probs. So, nothing else then?’‘Well, yeah. I think that, um. . . C—— are you getting anything?’‘. . .’‘So yeah, then just one of those teas. . . No, yeah, the purple one.’‘This?’‘Yeah, great then.’‘Okay. . . two-fifteen then.’‘Great. Lemme get my. . . um. . .’‘No rush my friend.’‘Yeah thanks.’‘Hey, whatchya reading there?’‘Oh. . . It’s this guy David Foster Wallace. He’s a—’‘Oh yeah, I’ve heard of him. I’ve heard his college thing I think.’‘Yeah yeah. The Kenyon Commencement Speech.’‘Sure.’‘Well, yeah anyway, this here is a collection of short stories.’‘Whatdya call it?’‘Ha, um. . . It’s called Brief Interviews with Hideous Men.’‘Right on. Killer title.’‘Yeah definitely. It’s a good one.’‘Well, here’s your tea man.’‘Oh great. It’s for her, but cool man thanks.’‘Hey, hold up.’‘. . .’‘So like what goes on in it?’‘The book?’‘Sure. What else?’‘Okay yeah. Um. . . well it’s like a series of short stories and everything, but also there are these interview-things throughout it and they’re supposed to be all from the perspective of guys and they all have some problem in relationships and everything. Some’ve ‘em are pretty misogynistic too. But yeah, it’s got a couple of my favorite stories in it.’‘Right on man. Lemme take a look.’‘Oh, yeah of course. Here.’‘Right on. Great cover.’‘Yeah, I like how the face is covered up by the bag. It’s kind of like how, well, I should say that in the interviews, all the names are gone and the dialogue is written so that there’s no person tags, or whatever to them. But so anyway, you don’t get any of the people’s names or the questions in the interview either. It’s just the words.’‘Right on man.’‘Yeah, it’s pretty great. I mean I can see how it could be a very just guy-type of book given that all the perspectives are all men and they’re all like, you know, pretty masculine and occasionally degrading to women and I could get how that might not make for the most sympathetic characters, if you know what I mean and not to generalize too much about women or anything.’‘Sure man, but I’m not sure if you have to sympathize with the character to appreciate a good book.’‘Ah! Definitely. You got me on that one.’‘For sure dude. Lolita and everything.’‘Ah, great book. One of my first loves.’‘No pun intended, eh?’‘Ha. Sure man, if you say so.’‘No, yeah, speaking of, here’s a Nabokov comparison on the back. Check it.’‘Right you are, there. It’s great. I mean backcover blurbs are always pretty over the top and ridiculous. But sometimes they’re cool. I mean, I’m not sure Nabokov is who DFW resembles most, but I guess I see what the person is saying.’‘Sure man, I feel you. But it’s like their only way to get the word out. I mean a lot of them depend on that kind of stuff.’‘Oh. . . the authors? Oh sure. No, I mean, and especially for unknown writers, it’s way important, definitely. But I think that’s a bit different than still calling out the bullshit of what it is. I don’t know.’‘Yeah. . . Hey, so what are the good stories?’‘Oh man, I mean there’s this one called the depressed person in it. Goddamn.’‘Oh yeah?’‘Yeah, I mean, maybe it’s a bit of a downer, but if you’re the type of person who has ever been through any kind of depression or anything, I mean, every line will just make you clutch your heart.’‘Oh yeah? Ha. I suppose by you saying that, it is an admission of having been through depression then?’‘Oh, yeah. I guess it is. I mean, it’s still a good story on its own merits.’‘For sure man. No, no offense or nothing. I’ve been through it all too. So no worries.’‘Sure.’‘Huh. . . looks like there’s some good-sized footnotes in here.’‘Oh, ‘course!’‘Yeah?’‘Definitely. That’s the DFW trademark. I mean, I don’t think there could be anyone who could ever use footnotes in fiction again without being pinned directly to Mr. Wallace.’‘Is that right?’‘It’s his trademark.’‘For sure. Well that’s cool.’‘Certs. And somewhat frustrating too.’‘Whatdya mean?’ ‘Well. Few reasons. First, as a reader. I mean, there’s a couple of those damn things that just drag on and on and they pull you out in mid-sentence and it’s kind of irritating especially for someone like me who reads real slow and has a hard time with following the complex stuff. So it’ll take you that much more time to just understand what all is happening. Don’t get me wrong, it’s worth it because he has so much to say that’s brilliant but still. . .’‘No yeah bro. I got you.’‘. . .’‘You said a few reasons?’‘Oh yeah. And the other is as a writer.’‘How’s that?’‘Oh well. Next time you sit down to write. Well, I’m not sure if you do write. If you don’t, you definitely should. It’s great.’‘Ha, if you insist bro.’‘No? Okay, anyway. You think to yourself, hey I’ll just try out a footnote to see what it’s like and them bam, you want to use it every time you sit down to write. It captures, like that part of your mind that sidetracks or argues against itself and gets away from the original point.’‘How’s that?’‘Well, it’s so easy when you write, to let your mind wander or just lock into a groove of a style and just go with it, but there has to be an outlet for the alternate voice in your head vying for attention.’‘Huh, okay man. I mean I don’t write so I guess I’ll just take your word there.’‘No sure, I get it. It kind of sounds like a bunch of abstract nonsense but trust me man. If you ever dive into it, you’ll see what I mean.’‘And how does the life as a writer treat you?’‘Oh goodness. I mean, I wouldn’t dare fashion myself with the label of a writer. I mean, I do try to write, but it’s not like I’m an actual writer in any real capacity.’‘For sure dude, you’ve got it. Be writing. Don’t be a writer.’‘Hey! William Faulkner!’‘You got it.’‘Right on dude.Well you know your shit.’‘Not really. My girlfriend is way into this shit. So I get an earful whenever we’re out or whatever.’‘Ah, damn. What a great girlfriend.’‘Yeah, man. She’s alright.’‘Well then, maybe she can sympathize with the footnote addiction. Because like I said, you start and then it’s so difficult to stop and all the while I feel guilty because I’m ripping from someone else.’‘All great artists steal.’‘Right again. But I mean, you’ve got to conceal who you steal from and you have to steal from a wide variety of people. I mean if an entire work of writing is copping just one author, people’ll notice.’‘. . .’‘Seriously man. Writing is a huge anxiety-ridden mess.’‘Why do it then?’‘Well, my life is a huge anxiety-ridden mess, so might as well try to become famous with it and regarded as brilliant or whatever.’‘Ha! Good one bro. Good one.’‘Yeah man. Well, shit looks like my date is pissed that I’m spending the whole time chatting up literature. I better go.’‘Ah, don’t worry about it bro. It makes you look cool, like you are good in conversation and she’s just lucky to have such a socially-stable person deigning to date her.’‘Really?’‘Ah, probably not bro. But it doesn’t hurt to think that, right?’‘Ha. Right you are my friend. Hey I’m S—— by the way.’‘Good to meet you S——. I’m J——.’‘J——. Good talk.’‘You too bro. I’ve gotta get to some other customers.’‘Sure man. You do that. . .’‘Who was that?’‘Dunno. Someone I just met.’‘Oh really. What did you talk about?’‘My book.’‘Oh, so that’s why you brought it with you on our date, to start up conversations with other people?’‘Oh. I guess I never thought about it.’‘. . .’‘Sorry?’‘Whatever. Let’s go somewhere else. This place is weird.’
There are several different, idiosyncratic kinds of things going on in Brief Interviews. Your bread and butter here are the (1) piercing views of interior monologue. Wallace has an unusual facility with voice and he puts to use here, as characters self-dissect and recriminate and justify in bottomless hall-of-mirrors sequences of self-reflection. These horror stories for the uncertain, for those who overthink. For those with anxiety that their proper outward actions might be self-satisfied, and feel deathly guilt over that satisfaction, and feel that the proper outward acts are a sham, and oh god can't they tell and-- it's maddening really. "The Depressed Person" is the best of these, perhaps, and the most justified given its subject, but others become interminable, painful, which might be the point given that we're dealing in inner turmoil here (they feel accurately painful), but this doesn't make them especially more readable. The flipside of this angle, however is the exterior monologue, the interview, the title's referent series and accompanying others, which, more on these later. The most insufferable of the self-reflexive miasmas really become especially tiresome once they fall into a worse and related trap, (1a) the post-modern literary self-dissection*, which really is a form of the first, but with Wallace himself stepping into his own cross-hairs. Or appearing to; that's the thing with post-modern devices, you can never be sure at which level they're operating. But take "Octet", a set parables pressed on the reader as moral quandaries that actually only gets as far as maybe 3.5 sections before unspooling into self-referential havoc of the most irritating variety of (1), but still setting it out as a moral quandary to the reader: "what would you do with this mess of an incomplete octet? Maybe your only way out is to explain your situation with the utmost, scathing honesty, to lay it out for the reader and to let--" AHHH, and we are collapsing Mouse-and-His-Child-style into a terrifying infinite regression. As each nested dog grins and leers, ask yourself: is this better, is this even as good, as the completed Octet would have been? It may be that this turning of the tables is actually well-planned and clever in ways I do not realize, but it seems that even if this is so, it still falls short of its initial stated goals. There is something interesting in Wallace's painful earnestness -- a trait he can never entirely shake, even at his most narratively non-self-referential -- but here it justifies the reputation he seems to have for abusing this sort of thing. Now I see where this comes from. It wasn't Infinite Jest, the self-references of which are strictly embedded, useful parts of the story, it isn't in the basically narrative-first near-novellas that compose Oblivion. It wasn't even a problem in The Broom of the System a story about stories: not even there does Wallace allow his writing to become so unmoored from itself as in "Octet", or as in -- the VERY NEXT story, driving the point home -- "Adult World" the second part of which is an outline describing the remainder of the story he was telling. After a first part that is actually quite a good example of (1), ask yourself Would part two have been better if Wallace had actually written it? It is very difficult not to come out with a yes here. The flipside is our narrative type (2), or maybe (1c), the exterior monologue, the Brief Interview, whose self-reference is typically in fact a significant layer of meaning. These brief interviews are virtuosicly delivered: Wallace's voiceless interviewer is an intriguing presence reflected in the eyes of these hideous men, hideous in distinctly believable ways. No "mere" cads and insensitives here, Wallace instead finessing intelligent, self-aware interviewees who carry themselves with some combination of apology and self-justification, people who understand why they are being scrutinized and are hideous because they stand by questionable convictions and, worse, often reveal them to be extremely everyday. The hideousness in question is occasionally overt but more often quite subtle. And they are not without their instants of pathos, perhaps even extreme pathos. Each -- and there are many, spread in four clusters through the book -- is a contribution to the startling whole but stands alone as an smoothly enclosed statement. These finely crafted units, and the final interview is one (as is the deathbed-bound monologue that precedes which might really be more of a (1) on further consideration, even though it is spoken aloud), are Wallace at his best, when he seems able to completely lose himself in the creation. Which brings us to (3) (or are we still on (2)...) the full-formed stories. The puberty-plunge of "Forever Overhead" is the most orthodox of these, albeit well-handled, but others see W.'s chameleonic voice -- whether dissecting human interaction through etymology or discussing televised entertainment struggles as a kind of neo-classical mythology (both of these through a lens of detached history, the work of unborn linguists and Homeric storytellers) -- is engaging, fascinating. And what to make of the beautiful, surreal expanse of "A Church Not Built With Hands", surely Wallace's most embellished prose, underscoring the conversational directness (word-wise; ignoring the meandering nature of real conversations DFW faithfully maintains) of much of the rest. "Church" may be just an overt form of another old Wallace trick: building worlds that are new and unfamiliar (here through sheer blinding language), and then making them stand effectively for -- and even elucidate -- our own.*I never know when finished with a mess of a review like this whether it is more horrible or more subject-accurate, and I could discuss this in detail but will spare you that ordeal except to say--
What do You think about Brief Interviews With Hideous Men (2000)?
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 of language that he works into the pieces will make you die because you hadn't yourself written them into a story yet and should have.Yes some of it comes off as "tricks" and is, get over it. But i don't want you to write it off as just experimental because what he's doing is important. There were chapters where i'd start with "Eh, is he really going to write about this, i'm not necessarily looking forward to this one," and i don't know if i'd say that the substance of the story is what ended up winning me over, but the style makes me care about and appreciate the substance. A lot! (And then in some cases the substance of the story itself IS winning.)And there were moments when i'd think "Okay i can see why people think he's probably an arrogant jerk and yeah i too could have thought of second-guessing my own pieces and then writing one that actually comments on that, easy way out," but no, he then knocks that idea, and then the idea of that idea, and so on, he's soooo many steps ahead, he always has the upper hand. So i guess if you want you can still just say he's pulling some meta bullshit gimmicks but i say the extreme to which he does it and distance from which he does it makes it great.Oh, there were so many parts that made me freak out. And it was so rich that by the end it was hard to remember that it was the same book that had contained the very first piece which blew me away from the start.Suffice it to say he's got it goin' on.
—Erikaaaa
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 is my least favorite DFW story ever (although that's like nominating the ugliest spouse in a Pitt-Jolie marriage), but ultimately, if approached with the dedication that DFW deserves from all readers, it becomes pretty clear that he punishes you only because he loves you and he knows that by the end of each story you will realize how afflicted with Stockholm Syndrome you have actually been all along. Brief Encounters is also the most philosophically prescriptive of DFW's collections, but miraculously it's neither didactic nor supplicating. What it is, truly, is genius. And it takes you on this emotional and intellectual roller coaster ride (a cliche I'm only using because DFW says it's okay if you really mean it) which, if you let it, will change you. And that's pretty special.
—The Awdude
The story 'Forver Overhead' made me realize the one thing that I appreciate most about DFW. Much of his writing is executed with such exquisite, painstaking detail that it not only causes me to visualize the scenario more clearly, but often at the same time a particular scene will make me recall memories that were long ago misplaced. This story is about a thirteen-year-old boy who works up the courage to tackle that youthful right of passage of going off of the high dive for the first time. The memory that this evoked for me was the vague fear that I always had in my pre-teen years of a wet foot sliding off of a wet, metal rung resulting in a banged up knee and potential fall to the concrete below. Another thing that impressed me about this story is that it was written in the second person. I know of very few stories that are well-executed from this point of view (Carlos Fuentes 'Aura' being the only one that comes to mind at the moment). This may have been the reason that I became so immersed in this particular story.My other favorite in this collection was 'Church Not Made With Hands.' The prose in this story is beautiful and there is a suggestion of magic realism afoot, in my opinion.The last section of 'Octet' made me laugh, as that nervously bumbling yet still brilliant writer persona that DFW does so well in his nonfiction makes an appearance.There is one thing that I am still pondering about the title story, 'Brief Interviews With Hideous Men.' This story, which is divided into sections and spread throughout the book, can be sloppily summarized as the text of interviews with men who would be considered creeps in regard to how they deal with and relate to women. One section, however, outlines the life of an older black man who has spent a majority of his work life as the attendant in a swanky restroom. I'm still struggling with how this section fits in with the rest.This is billed as "experimental fiction" but I think that it is a mixed bag that contains something for everyone.
—Matt
