Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

For the 2009 film, see Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (film).

Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

First Edition hardcover
Author	David Foster Wallace
Cover artist	John Fulbrook III
Language	English
Genre	Short story
Publisher	Little Brown and Company
Publication date	May 28, 1999
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print (hardback, paperback)
Pages	288 pp
ISBN	0-316-92541-1
OCLC	40354776
Dewey Decimal	813/.54 21
LC Class	PS3573.A425635 B65 1999
Preceded by	A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again
Followed by	Everything and More

Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (1999) is a collection of 23 short stories by David Foster Wallace. Several of the stories are entitled "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men" and are presented as transcripts of interviews with male subjects. The interviewer's questions are omitted from the transcripts, rendered merely as "Q." These stories and the rest of the collection are characterized by dark dry humor, alienation, and unconventional sexuality.

In 1997 Wallace was awarded the Aga Khan Prize for Fiction by 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 #20" in the collection.

Twelve of the "Interviews" were adapted into a stage play (Hideous Men) by Dylan McCullough in 2000, marking the first theatrical adaptation of any of Wallace's works. McCullough directed the premiere at the New York International Fringe Festival in August 2000.

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 used a variety of multimedia techniques such as projection of the letter 'Q' on a backdrop that disrupted the monologues and a system of ear-pieces and auto-cues to convey the script to the actors on stage. The adaptation used four of the interviews and one short story and contained new music by the Grubby Mitts.

21 of the interviews and stories were adapted and directed by David McGuff for Yellow Lab Productions entitled "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men." 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.

Actor John Krasinski of The Office has adapted and directed a film version on the "Brief Interviews" stories that was released in 2009. Julianne Nicholson plays Sara Quinn, the interviewer unnamed in the stories.

List of stories

• "A Radically Condensed History of Postindustrial Life"
• "Death Is Not the End"
• "Forever Overhead"
• "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men"
• "Yet Another Example of the Porousness of Certain Borders (XI)"
• "The Depressed Person"
• "The Devil Is a Busy Man"
• "Think"
• "Signifying Nothing"
• "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men"
• "Datum Centurio"
• "Octet"
• "Adult World (I)"
• "Adult World (II)"
• "The Devil Is a Busy Man"
• "Church Not Made with Hands"
• "Yet Another Example of the Porousness of Certain Borders (VI)"
• "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men"
• "Tri-Stan: I Sold Sissee Nar to Ecko"
• "On His Deathbed, Holding Your Hand, the Acclaimed New Young Off-Broadway Playwright's Father Begs a Boon"
• "Suicide as a Sort of Present"
• "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men"
• "Yet Another Example of the Porousness of Certain Borders (XXIV)"

External links

• Salon review