David Foster Wallace has recently been catapulted into the conversation about authorship and media presences because of the release of the movie “End of the Tour.” Jason Segal plays David Foster Wallace, who is on a book release tour with Rolling Stone profiler David Lipsky, played by Jesse Eisenburg. The movie has been controversial for many reasons, mostly because Wallace disliked his presence within the media as an author. Many of his pieces explored the importance of media and television with a critical eye, and a film adaption of his life seems to be a disservice to the beliefs he held. We have not seen the film yet, but it did make us stop and consider why David Foster Wallace established himself as such a cornerstone in American fiction.
One of the first books we encountered by Wallace was “Brief Interviews with Hideous Men,” a collection of short stories. Several stories are framed as interviews with the questions omitted from the text, while others are short stories or works of prose. Wallace’s craft is striking; the text is witty and dark and poignant.
A particular story that has always stuck with us is “Brief Interviews with Hideous Men #6” or “#6 E——— on ‘How and Why I Have Come to be Totally Devoted to S——— and Have Made Her the Linchpin and Plinth of My Entire Emotional Existence’”.
In this story, the interviewer converses with a male, who is recounting an interaction he had with a woman who was sexually assaulted and almost died. The man reveals that he has fallen in love with this woman, who navigated her way through a traumatic event and saved herself from a certain death.
The story is compelling and suspenseful to the point where it almost becomes voyeuristic, and this sense of narrative control is where Wallace’s talent lies. He is able to draw a reader in and place him within the structure of the story, without real understanding or awareness from the reader.
In this story, we found ourselves completely absorbed by the retelling of a gruesome event, and were guided along through the different emotions felt by the man telling the story and the supposed feelings of the female. We, as readers, find ourselves aligning our loyalties to multiple characters, only to have their personalities shift.
The prose is fast, conversational, and very believable. Wallace’s chameleon-like voice is one of the strengths of this story, because even though the plot is so unique, there is no doubt that it is a David Foster Wallace story. As a starting point for his works, which can be intimidating at first, “Brief Interviews with Hideous Men” is a great place to begin. Wallace is one of the most memorable and talented voices in the modern American literary tradition, emphasized by his recent revival through film, and you would be missing out to not attempt to experience some of his writing.