Brief Interviews with Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace

You all know I get some book suggestions from Entertainment Weekly. A couple weeks ago, EW presented their preview of fall movies. Turns out that John Krasinski (Jim of The Office) had obtained the rights to ‘Brief Interviews…’ with his first real paycheck for The Office and the movie opens later in September. So, I thought I’d check it out.

This is a series of essays on all kinds of odd topics. Like 4-5 pages describing a noted poet lounging by the pool (or was it the beach?) . . . it was maybe 10 long compound sentences that seemed to never end. Then there was the story of a young boy waiting in line for his first attempt at the high board at the neighborhood pool. Of course, there was the story of the young wife worried that her sexual techniques (or lack thereof) were somehow doing harm to her husband’s thingy. Or the boy getting his soup bowl haircut. The title states ‘interviews,’ but the actual interviews are few and the reader only sees the responses, never the questions. And the interviews are transcribed out of order, mostly about the interviewee’s relationship with women.

Apparently, Wallace is a bit of a cult figure who battled severe depression throughout much of his adult life. He actually taught at Illinois State University while I was on faculty there, but the English and PE departments were literally and figuratively on opposite sides Main St. During a period of trying to revise his medication in 2008 while he was teaching in California, he took his life.

The jacket liner uses the work ‘hilarious’, but I didn’t see the humor. I guess you had to work at it and all I want when I read most things is to be engaged and entertained. You can’t discount the creative genius in keeping a reader’s attention when a sentence can run beyond an entire page. Given his personal history, I couldn’t help but wonder how many of the stories had some autographical basis, but I could be wrong. I guess there is a lot of truth in the desperation of the men being interviewed.

Sometimes I like to read a book that has been made into a movie to see how Hollywood (usually) manages to screw it up. It’s the rare movie that’s as good as the book and ever rarer with it’s better. I read the book Schindler’s List was based on and the real genius was the screenwriter because the book, while important, had little of the story development and depth of presentation of the movie. To read the book then see the movie would have one walking out of the flick saying, “how in the heck did they get this movie from that book?” The movie was far better. Same with the book the movie Jeremiah Johnson was based on. I will probably go see this movie just to see how in the world Krasinski (he’s the screenwriter) manages to make this watch able. Guessing it will be very talk-y, more like a play put on film. As an exploration into the mind of men, I think WCD might be better equipped for this one than I.

East Coast Don