Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (1999) is a collection of 23 short stories by David Foster Wallace

David Foster Wallace

David Foster Wallace was an American author of novels, essays, and short stories, and a professor at Pomona College in Claremont, California...

. 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

Aga Khan Prize for Fiction

The Aga Khan Prize for Fiction is awarded by the editors of The Paris Review for what they deem to be the best short story published in the magazine in a given year. No applications are accepted. The winner gets $1,000...

 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 of 2000.

Actor John Krasinski

John Krasinski

John Burke Krasinski is an American actor, film director, and writer. He is most widely known for playing Jim Halpert on the NBC sitcom The Office...

 of The Office has adapted and directed a film version

Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (film)

Brief Interviews with Hideous Men is a 2009 American comedy-drama film written, produced, and directed by John Krasinski, based on a short story collection of the same name by David Foster Wallace.-Plot:...

 on the "Brief Interviews" stories that was released in 2009. Julianne Nicholson

Julianne Nicholson

Julianne Nicholson is an American actress. She is known for having played Det. Megan Wheeler on Law & Order: Criminal Intent.-Early life:...

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