Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

Rating:
Summary: If it truly was 'Brief' it might have been good
Review: A "brief" history of my relationship with David Foster Wallace's oeuvre is necessary, before I discuss the book in question:

I devoured "The Broom of the System", finding its characters, situations, and storytelling unique and enthralling. Although I was upset by it's ending (or lack thereof), I assumed it would be a good warm-up for "Infinite Jest". Wrong! So far, I've made two passes at that behemoth tome. The second time I even made it to page 200 before stopping in frustration. So when approaching "Brief Interviews", I was hoping for more "Broom" than "Jest". Wrong!

In reading "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men" one notices the extent that Wallace fancies himself the ultimate postmodern author. If you were to describe to me the style he uses here, I'd have to say: "Wow, what a neat idea! Challenge and frustrate the reader with unreadable prose, paragraphs that go on for pages and pages without a break, and endless footnotes that go on in infinite detail about the same mundane topic discussed in the body of the text! Genius!"

That's all well and good in theory, but it's a bitch to read. In this book Wallace uses his vast vocabulary in such a way that you'd think it would disappear if not exercised constantly. He even goes so far as to make up new words to try out. In one piece here he twice uses the word 'weeest', not because it is a more precise adjective than 'wee' (as in "...hours of the morning") but because its three-consecutive E's make it look exotic. It's style winning out over substance. And those paragraphs! They're endless. Try holding your breath for five minutes, and you'll know what it's like wading through a DFW paragraph. I asphyxiated on more than one occasion. Especially when those marathon paragraphs were made up of but a single sentence. As for the footnotes, sometimes they added substance to the piece, but more often than not they were merely distracting. One piece in particular actually had more text in the footnotes than in the main body. I was flipping back and forth like a madman trying to figure out what I was supposed to read next.

But the biggest peeve I had was his insistence on leaving the reader hanging. There are no payoffs here. The pieces don't end; they just stop. Sometimes I thought they could have gone on interminably, but instead Wallace decided to quit at some random point. After wading through twenty or so pages of philosophical ramblings and long-winded discussions, a punchline would have helped make me look forward to the next piece. As it is, I didn't.

I must say, though, that I wish I had Wallace's talent. That's not to say that I would use it the same way he does but it would be nice to have it there when I needed it. He seems to be constantly involved in a game of showing it off. His style is self indulgent to the nth degree. "Let's see how cool I can be," he seems to be saying. "Let's see how far post-modernism can stretch." The odd thing is that Wallace is willing to admit to this fault in an interesting way. Witness the first line in the last sub-chapter of the piece titled 'Octet': "You are, unfortunately, a fiction writer." He puts this (ironic) hindrance on the reader's shoulder. But as the piece moves along, it becomes apparent that he's constructing a meta-fictional rebuke of the sub-chapters that appeared before this one. He rips their intentions and their techniques to shreds. Ad infinitum. It's a great bit of self-referential (dare I say) theatre; the post-modern writer attacking his own post-modernism, in a hyper-post-modern way. It's enough to make the reader's head spin. Mine did.

There are a couple of other pieces here that really hooked me. "Tri-Stan: I Sold Sissee Nar to Ecko" is Wallace at his most fun. Using contemporary cultural objects as a new language, punning mercilessly (e.g. a line describing University of Southern California cheerleaders as "attendants at the Saturday temple of the padded gods Ra & Sisboomba" had me chuckling but good), and coining modern day epigrams such as "The Medium would handle the Message's PR", he tells a convoluted tale about modern narcissism. Although the joke runs out of steam halfway through, it's still quite a strong piece. The opening piece, "A Radically Condensed History of Post-Industrial Life" clearly shows Wallace can be a genius when he focuses his gifts. And the title pieces, a quartet interspersed throughout the book, embodies all the problems I've detailed above. But they are still quite powerful in their depiction of modern man's ugliness (or rather 'hideousness').

I admit that there were some pieces here that I couldn't finish, either out of frustration or ignorance. That's probably more my fault than Dave's. Still, he could have helped me out a bit. But he never did. So even though I admired his talents, I didn't like his book.

Rating:
Summary: The Future of Fiction
Review: I can only echo jonvoellestad's excellent review below. This is truly a book for our times, and Wallace is the one contemporary writer who seems to hit the mark with everything he does. He is able to track and elucidate moments in life which we all have but which we've never seen in fiction before.

There are many great stories and vignettes here but the highlight is the outstanding penultimate story (simply called Brief Interviews #20) in which a man narrates his experience of a girl telling the story of how she was raped by a psychotic sex killer. The trick is that Wallace manages to write highly self-consciously, humorously and movingly all at the same time, no easy feat. He takes the best parts of the realist, modernist and postmodernist traditions and combines them into something new and hilariously funny.

In doing so he transcends genre to produce something new and very exciting. The future of fiction is here.

Rating:
Summary: Comparatively accessible, and highly rewarding
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: A work of twisted genius
Review: In this collection of short stories, David Foster Wallace displays a deep understanding of the dark side of the male psyche. He also has fun with words and structure and tries out some unusual story ideas, but at the core of the book are the "interviews with hideous men" that provide the title.
My personal favourites were Adult World (I) and (II), a two part exploration of a relationship, and The Devil is a Busy Man. Foster Wallace is *so* good at getting into the (lack of) communication prevalent in all forms of relationships and at exploring what is not being said or even acknowledged.
The collection is patchy - although tastes will differ, for my money The Depressed Person is just plain boring and some other stories drag and/or don't quite work. But when you're exploring this far over the edge sometimes the risks aren't gonna pay off.
This book should be compulsory reading for all women and for all men who wish to better understand themselves and their gender.

Rating:
Summary: A little less infinite....
Review: Writers can be divided into two major types: poets and scientists. If poet-writers are your thing -guys like Henry Miller, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, or J.D. Salinger- stay away from this book. Wallace is a mad scientist, a manipulator of storytelling's double helix. Instead of going for the heart he opts for the brain. Some authors paint picures; this guy makes Rubik's cubes. He out-Pynchons Pynchon.

In this collection of short stories Wallace attempts to expand definitions with his characteristic ultra-weirdness, and I think to an extent he succeeds. Although some of them fizzle, the length is never such that you feel let down, and the successes encountered along the way -most particularly his "Hideous Men" and "The Depressed Person"- are well worth the less than fruitful moments. The brevity of the work may attract readers away from his mind-boggling "Infinte Jest," but I'd be lying if I told you that this book was better. I'd recommend "Infinite Jest" over this one any day, but if you haven't the time to wade through such a vast landscape this will give you at least a hint of the strange and funny mind at work.

I think any reader with smarts and a good sense of humor will find this book problematic and enjoyable BECAUSE it's problematic. If you like to laugh and enjoy a little masochism in your reading experience, pick it up.

Rating:
Summary: yup, another unsatisfied fan
Review: Yup, another unsatisfied fan. I feel the need to preface any statement about the new book with my take on his previous work. It seems standard enough at this point. I absolutely loved Girl With Curious Hair, a book whose inventiveness is to this day the freshest thing I've ever found in the 98-cent bargain bin. I really liked a lot of Infinite Jest and just about all of A Supposedly Fun Thing. Broom in the System confounds me -- I can't understand why anyone published it, except for the fact that he went on to write such great stuff; so clearly people saw talent in Broom where I just saw a student's brave but not-ready-for-public-consumption work.

Though Wallace disowns it, I really like the rap book he did -- it covers very similar territory to Hideous Me: it's about the paralysis of self-consciousness, as others have phrased it here.

Which brings us to the new book. A number of the stories I found excellent -- especially the piece about the thirteen year old -- but the endless, despondent, soul-damaged monologues got to be too much after a while. Too much repetition, too much monotone.

I'm all for anti-heroes; I loved Cockpit, for example, but at least there Kosinski imbued his protagonist with something more than a litany of dissatisfactions. This book is like an id -- or a series of ids -- hooked up to a microphone; people are more complex than their complaints. By the end of the title piece, I actually found myself scanning rather than reading, which was a disorienting experience for me, because I'm so used to hanging on DFW's words, and watching brilliant transitions unfold. I found Neal Stephenson's extended tangents in his new one, Cryptonomicon, far more satisfying (if sloppy, too) than most of Hideous Men.