Brief Interviews With Hideous Men

Verdict:  David Foster Wallace is sometimes difficult to read; He thinks (well, knows) he’s not stupid, and this comes across aggressively in his writing. Simply, his prose is often too verbose. Though no stranger to overcomplicated writing, I found myself becoming distracted and zoning out. It can be exhausting interacting with someone who is constantly paging through a thesaurus in their head. Halfway through the novel, I opted for a copy of the audiobook. Wallace’s own reading was dry, but the one-sided interviews read by the title’s “hideous men” (including John Krasinski, Will Forte) were engaging. For me, the most memorable interviews were with the son of the washroom attendant, the husband of a rape victim, and the young man who sleeps with a hippie-dippy girl. [Book 1/50]