The modern interview sections are usually witty and telling of just how much desperation imbues human nature. Wallace is fully aware of the nasty quips and undercuts that people who fall out of love are perfectly capable of. Their exchange is all dialogue, and it’s rather biting and cut-throat indeed. You have a husband and wife who, after a long and tumultuous marriage, decide to break things off in 1956. Photo by Markus Spiske on Īlong with superficial sexual encounters, there are other fine examinations of human relationships within these pages. Sometimes life really does stretch out before us like those clear blue waters. The pains of growing up and somehow still loathing oneself with the power of a full-grown adult are fully realized. In “Forever Overhead,” we follow along with a young man who is weighing the importance of his own existence and sexuality while gathering up the courage to leap from a diving board into the pool down below. There are, however, more concise and conventional tales whose message is clearer. There is one entry, an 18-page Greek epic-like satire on 70’s TV producers, that drags and very nearly implodes in on itself. Heavy with psychobabble and run-on sentences, Brief Interviews is in some ways more dense than Wallace’s masterpiece, Infinite Jest.
It’s a tragic, freewheeling, and often macabre look at the highs and lows of intimacy. These somewhat disparate entries come together to knock down conventional literary techniques and male egoism with a sort of neurotic fervor.
Such is the case with Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, an anthology of short stories, essays, media transcripts, and stream of consciousness accounts. Even in death, his works continue to offer countless readers one mind-bending and soul-shattering exercise after another. David Foster Wallace is a titan among literary writers.
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