Brief Interviews with Hideous Men - Softcover

David Foster Wallace is one of those either-love-him-or-hate-him kind of writers, but most of the subjects in his collection are--as the title suggests--worthy of contempt. On this audiocassette, DFW, as he's known to his fans, reads a selection of his works from the book of the same name. The fictional "interviews" are brief forays into the minds of men via questions that are signaled with a verbal "Q," but never actually asked. While he reads those pieces in the voices of the interviewees, Wallace reads the rest of the collection--a handful of short stories--with the self-conscious lack of emotion commonly used by poets. Don't look for plot or action here; it's strictly character sketches with a good dose of verbal gymnastics. And don't expect to like most of the characters; it's clear the author doesn't either. (Running time: 3 hours, 2 cassettes) --Kimberly Heinrichs

David Foster Wallace has made an art of taking readers into places no other writer even gets near. In this exuberantly acclaimed collection he combines hilarity and an escalating disquiet in stories that astonish, entertain, and expand our ideas of the pleasures that fiction can afford.