Picture David Lynch directing, not whole episodes, but single snatches of Seinfeld dialogue, and you've got the gist of David Foster Wallace's title story Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. It peppers this book of short stories, leaving off and picking up with different "subjects" (interviewees) as the other stories end. The reader, who it's presumed stands in for the interviewer, is represented by just the letter 'Q' in between large swaths of interviewee (these are allegedly the hideous men) monologue. There are intense layers of ironies amidst narratives ranging from graphic and disturbing to witty and downright hilarious. They sets the tone for all of the stories in the book, inviting the reader into an interrogation room and forcing them to ponder difficult questions about moments of growth or beauty or togetherness in the presence of intense trauma.
While the theme seems to be relatively consistent, these stories have extraordinary range in style. Even though each story is drastically different there is something so obviously David Foster Wallace persistent in each, that binds them together. Like DFW temprament is the One Ring or something. It also makes it difficult to point out any one story that stands out. Sure, there is truly intricate and beautiful prose like in Forever Overhead or Church Not Made with Hands, two stories that made me literally despair at how well they were written (the contemporary world of literature lost one of the true greats). Or there is the essential neurotic Wallace in The Depressed Person or Dantum Centurio, whose incessant repetition and over-technicality felt both hilarious and aggravating. In Octet you're met with Wallace's distinct brand of Meta-fiction, which at its worst could probably put any Woody Allen movie to shame; the way it teeters between begrudging self degradation and endearing honesty is refreshing for a style usually reserved for smugness or cynicism. And finally there is Wallace as just a really good story teller. For the reader who values plot over all else I'd give them Adult World, On His Deathbed, Holding Your Hand, and above all else; Signifying Nothing. Each with a radically disturbing element; fierce, hidden guilt about that disturbing element; and a coherent, linear plot the three stories are written the way short fiction should be written. Signifying Nothing is particularly artful at both pushing you way outside of your comfort zone and then comforting you there, possibly expanding something deep inside you, all in the course of a few pages.
Which is what makes this book of short stories so great. It is an introduction to Wallace's special kind of fiction, without delving into massive projects like Infinite Jest or the cripplingly sad (and long) Pale King. DFW believed vehemently that good fiction should disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed, a line I believe he borrowed from another author. Regardless, nothing speaks more to his dedication to this idea than Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. If you're looking for Foster Wallace fiction, or you're looking for the standard with which all short fiction should strive, this should be at the top of your list.
