Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

With David Foster Wallace’s last, unfinished, novel hitting book stores on April 15th, what better time would there be for me to review another of his books? Actually, I’m kind of misleading you. I read this book purely for the joy of it, and didn’t realise The Pale King (the new one) was coming out soon. What I found was a collection of short stories as brilliant as any of his other works, but with a newfound sense of anxiety underpinning many of the pieces.

If there’s one theme that ties all of the short stores together, it’s probably that many of them attempt to understand in very clear detail what’s happening in a large range of peoples minds. The title short story is split across the book, and simply consists of hideous men discussing their lives. These sections are often hilarious, with obscene twists, and frequently play on your expectations as a reader. This is the first book I’ve read by Foster Wallace written after Infinite Jest, and so there is a level of playfulness and inventiveness familiar to his readers, but here there is a brevity to the stories that really mark them out.

As I mentioned earlier, there is also a sense of anxiety. I first noticed this through ‘Octet’, which consists of a series of short stories which are immediately followed by a question, kind of like something from an English exam. There are two things that go wrong with this (and not go wrong as in don’t work). The second question ends with him realising that the set-up for the question has failed, and apologising for the inherent vagueness of the set up. There is a follow up question featuring the same characters, which luckily works. The final question, however, is the fifth (not the eighth), and is question nine. In this, you are asked to imagine that you’re a writer, who is attempting to write eight questions. The problem is, most of them don’t work. What follows is a bizarre insight into the writing process. Foster Wallace puts you into his position, talks you through what he’s been trying to do, and explains why he’s included 'octet' in the book. He then takes it a step further, and discusses his reasons for writing what you’re reading, explaining how much time he’s put into making it clear that the tone of what you’re currently reading has to be just right, and completely nakedly honest.

There are other examples of this kind of writing through the book, but I don’t want to ruin the whole thing. I admit I’m a huge fan of this guy, but I really feel his writing is simply better than anything else written in recent times. After reading this though, I was left with a big question. Is this anxiety real or imagined? Is his explanation of his thoughts into the writing process real, or is it entirely fictional, and playing with me? I suspect this is the real question at the heart of brief interviews.