Country: USA
Genre: Literary/Short Stories
Pages: 321
David Foster Wallace committed suicide by hanging in 2008. Recently, his archives have been acquired and made available by the University Of Texas in Austin. In those papers, a story written when he was nine years old that is an eerie sign of alarm. After reading Brief Interviews With Hideous Men, it's hard to believe no one ever figured out it was coming like a train in their living room. If you write a four pages story called "Suicide As A Sort Of Present" you're waving orange landing strip flags in hope to get help.
Take The Broom Of The System, written twelve years earlier, remove all playfulness and Pynchonesque allusions and you get twenty-three short stories that sink gradually into a despair that borderlines madness. It starts with one of the best short stories I have ever read, called "Forever Overhead", where the protagonist is a 13 years old on his birthday and the narrator seems to be (it's never said) his older self. He looks at himself with somewhat of a subtle melancholy, but never interferes. I have rarely been taken like this by a short story, let alone by a book. Wallace's maestria at its finest.
If the anthology is called Brief Interviews With Hideous Men is that it's articulated around four thirty something pages stories where a female protagonist interviews different males for an unsaid reason. The format once again flirts with genius. The girl is completely silent, her questions are only noted by the letter Q., as if we're reading her notes. The men go from creepy to unbelievable stupid to boring as hell. Most of the time I skimmed some part thinking "Man, just shut the fuck up". I think outrage was exactly what Wallace aimed for. In a sense, it's heightening the feeling of sadness and uselessness of the protagonist. They were good, but after two of those, I understood the purpose. I skimmed most of the third and fourth because it's he same thing. Idiots who listen to themselves talk. Lively idiots, but idiots nonetheless.
"Signifying Nothing", "On His Deathbed, Holding Your Hand" and "Suicide As A Sort Of Present" are the three stories that grabbed me by the throat, apart from "Forever Overhead". There's a beautiful, almost musical sadness to those. Like he has given up on the world and tries to explain us why, without ever finding the words he wants. It's unsettling to the point it's making you feel uncomfortable. It's not for every reader. Some other stories are purely therapeutic, like "Octet", for example or "The Depressed Person" who both reminded me of Henry Rollins' intimate apocalypse scenarios he used to write in his younger days. They are sad, but they serve a cathartic purpose more than anything else. They are written to make Wallace blow some steam more than to be a beautiful story. I can understand.
It's written in the cover blurbs that this anthology is funny. I'm not sure where the humor is, if someone has laughed while reading Brief Interviews With Hideous Men, I'd like to know where and why. Please. I can understand the absurdity of the hideous suitors, but they are more infuriating than anything else. Fans of Wallace don't want to miss out on this one, it's a powerhouse. It's also very depressing and if you're looking to get into him, might want to start with the non-fiction stuff, because this is pretty darn serious stuff.
