SOURCE: McLaughlin, Robert L. Review of Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, by David Foster Wallace. Review of Contemporary Fiction 19, no. 3 (fall 1999): 158-59.

In the following review, McLaughlin lauds Brief Interviews with Hideous Men as a “virtuoso display” and a fine literary achievement.

In Brief Interviews with Hideous Men David Foster Wallace collects twenty-three pieces of fiction, most written since the publication of Infinite Jest in 1996. Few of these are stories in the conventional sense. Rather, the book makes into fiction many other forms: the title interviews, which provide the structure of the book; monologues; a play; pop quizzes; an outline; and harder-to-define nonnarrative snapshots of various characters and their lives. The results are both familiar, as we recognize techniques and themes from Wallace's earlier work, and surprising, as we see Wallace taking his post-big-novel work in new directions.

The various pieces here work together to explore three interconnected...