A review by klaws500
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace

2.75

I could not connect with this one. I did enjoy Forever Overhead, about a boy jumping off the diving board at the public pool for the first time, and there were some interesting parts in the recurring title story. Of those I especially liked the one about the men's room attendant. The final installment of Yet Another Example of the Porousness of Certain Borders was very good too. This was my first experience with David Foster Wallace and he reminds me a bit of George Saunders but without the generosity and empathy I always get from Saunders. This collection was painful to read, with neurosis and pessimism on every page. And the footnotes that would stretch pages in some of the stories just didn't work at all, they pulled me out of the flow and I could never find it again. All told I found this collection challenging in an unpleasant way.