Brief Interviews with Hideous Men Summary

Brief Interviews with Hideous Men Overview

David Foster Wallace's short story collection "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men" is an unconventional work of fiction that usually ignores the hallmarks of literature -- such as sensory detail, or identifying information about characters. Many of the short stories are formatted as monologues, where there is no narration or information outside of what a single character speaks. For instance, in four separate chapters that are all entitled "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men," several different men speak exclusively in first-person monologue format. Each of these interviews shows a man struggling with some form of sexual dysfunction -- sometimes comical, sometimes threatening -- and their struggle to form genuine human intimacy.