Brief Interviews with Hideous Men


Brief Interviews with Hideous Men is a critically acclaimed short story collection by American writer David Foster Wallace, first published in 1999 by Little, Brown. The book has been adapted numerous times for stage and screen.
The 23 metafictional pieces in the collection are "difficult to categorise, roaming wilfully across the boundaries of genres and inventing new ones", which one story appears to "self-mockingly acknowledg". Four of the stories are entitled "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men" and consist of numbered sections of varying length that are presented as transcripts of interviews with male subjects. The interviewer's questions are omitted from the transcripts, rendered merely as "Q". The collection is characterized by dark humor, alienation and irony.
As its title suggests, the book critiques aspects of modern masculinity and male chauvinism. "The 'hideous men' in Wallace's short stories are monstrous, parodic versions of Updikean characters, scrutinized with the eye of a pathologist... Their sin is an implacable, and peculiarly American, strain of egoism."
In 1997 Wallace was awarded the Aga Khan Prize for Fiction by the editors of The Paris Review for "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men #6", which had appeared in the magazine and appears as "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men " in the collection.

Performances and adaptations

In August 2000, twelve of the "Interviews" were adapted into a stage play by Dylan McCullough, marking the first theatrical adaptation of any of Wallace's works. McCullough directed the premiere at the New York International Fringe Festival.
John Krasinski adapted and directed a 2009 film version of the "Brief Interviews" stories. Julianne Nicholson plays Sara Quinn, the interviewer unnamed in the stories.
Also in 2009, Hachette Audio released an unabridged audiobook production of the book read by an ensemble cast similar to that of Jon Krasinski's film, including Krasinski, Will Arnett, Bobby Cannavale, Chris Messina, Corey Stoll, Will Forte, and the author.
In August 2012 British artists Andy Holden and David Raymond Conroy presented a stage adaptation of the book at the ICA, London, which later toured to Arnolfini, Bristol. The production adapted four of the interviews and one short story using a variety of multimedia techniques, and contained new music by the Grubby Mitts.
A stage production adapting 21 of the interviews and stories, entitled "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men", was directed by David McGuff for Yellow Lab Productions. The production ran three nights, August 28–30, 2014, at the Hill Country Arts Foundation's Point Theater on the Elizabeth Huth Coates indoor stage.

List of stories