SOURCE: Begley, Adam. “The Incredible Shrinking Jest: Wallace Makes More with Less.” The New York Observer (24 May 1999): 26.

In the following review, Begley praises the brevity and focus of the stories in Brief Interviews with Hideous Men and asserts that the pieces offer a “quick glimpse of common humanity in every grotesque.”

It's a lovely title, Brief Interviews With Hideous Men, and also unlikely: as if anything from the pen of David Foster Wallace, the profligate Wunderkind who gave us 1,079 pages of Infinite Jest could ever be brief. Mr. Wallace has a pause button (he's famous for his footnotes) but no mute, no stop, no off. Or that's what I thought till now.

This new collection of short fiction proves that the 36-year-old Mr. Wallace, who is now known in knee-jerk blurb-mode as the major talent of his generation, can do it all, even brevity: The first item, a...