Commentary on "Hideous Men"

There have been some requests for commentary, so here it goes. In the future I'll put my comments at the end of the post, but for this one, just so it doesn’t get lost, I’ve created a separate post.

I almost wish I hadn’t started with a David Foster Wallace story, because the more I read him, the more I feel that he’s an endpoint rather than a beginning. I discovered him a few weeks ago because my friend/benefactor/roommate (Caleb for those of you who know him) was reading Infinite Jest and had “Brief Interviews with Hideous Men” lying around the apartment. I’ve always heard him described as a postmodern writer, which is maybe why it’s taken me so long to get to him, but I think there’s an added dimension to his writing that you don’t find in writers like DeLillo and Pynchon.

In an interview with Larry McCaffery, he said, “Look, man, we’d probably most of us agree that these are dark times, and stupid ones, but do we need fiction that does nothing but dramatize how dark and stupid everything is?” and I think that’s what sets him apart. The dominant tendency that I’ve uncovered in other postmodern literature is to highlight the absurdities and paradoxes inherent in modern society without trying to overcome them or pass moral judgment on them. For those of you who have read White Noise or watched Aqua Teen Hunger Force, you’ll know what I mean (maybe I’m being a bit harsh), and although Foster Wallace is certainly guilty of doing this at times, it doesn’t seem to be his ultimate intention.

The first story in “Brief Interviews” is a good example of what I’m talking about. It’s called “A Radically Condensed History of Postindustrial Life”:

When they were introduced, he made a witticism, hoping to be liked. She laughed extremely hard, hoping to be liked. Then each drove home alone, staring straight ahead, with the very same twist to their faces.
The man who’d introduced them didn’t much like either of them, though he acted as if he did, anxious as he as to preserve good relations at all times. One never knew, after all, now did one, now did one now did one.

This is his starting point for the book: a world where intentions, personalities, and underlying psychologies have been fractured and called into question to such a degree that it’s foolish to even try to see beyond the surface of things. In this respect, Foster Wallace is very similar to other postmodern writers, but you can’t blame him for that; it would be cheesy for him to return to the sentimental realism that was perfected by writers like Hemmingway and Fitzgerald. I love that kind of writing, but if I read someone who wrote that way today, I’d think it was absurd, the same way I’d find contemporary classical music written in the in the style of Motzart to be trash. There’s a time and place for everything, and David Foster Wallace was born a postmodernist.

At the same time, he once said, “Fiction’s about what it is to be a fucking human being.” And that’s what I think is awesome about the story I posted. Without ignoring the absurdity and irony of contemporary American life, he manages to add a human element that’s largely absent in the other postmodern literature I’ve read, and he does it without being cheesy or returning to the sentimental realism of the Modernists.

So how does he do it?

I haven’t read nearly enough of his stuff to make broad sweeping claims, but what he does in the passage I posted is really interesting. First, I think it’s worth noting that he writes the passage in a very verbal style. You can’t help but hear the interviewee’s voice as you read it. Second, he keeps you in the dark as to what the point of Johnny One-Arm’s story is. It’s not until about half way through the story that you realize Johnny’s using his arm to emotionally dismantle women in order to sleep with them.

Delaying that realization is a very important part of how the story functions. It allows the reader to empathize with the character briefly before turning against him. The tendency to empathize, I would argue, forms the classical interior of the short story. When you think of all the great modernist writers of the past, they all created characters in their stories that the reader could identify with. That was their way of highlighting “what it is to be a fucking human being.” They tried to share universal human experiences with their readers by encouraging them (the readers) to feel with the central characters of the story. For example, when you lose yourself in a book like The Old Man and the Sea, you do so by diving into the fictional world and sitting side by side with the old man, braving the elements and feeling his thirst and his pain and his desire. And the space that the fiction creates in order for you to be able to do that is what I’m referring to here as its ‘interior’.

For the most part, the fictional interior disappears in postmodern writing. If you go back to “A Radically Condensed History of Postindustrial Life,” you’ll see what I mean. In postmodern culture the very possibility of uncovering an underlying psychology with which to identify is called into question, and as a result the interior space collapses, and I think that’s what David Foster Wallace is playing on in “Brief Interviews.” Just as the reader begins to empathize with Johnny, the door is shut in his/her face. Not only does Johnny take advantage of women, he does so by manipulating their natural instinct to feel sorry for him, which is important, because the fact that he exploits other people’s sympathy makes the reader feel fully justified in withholding his/hers. All of a sudden, with that refusal of sympathy, the reader is expelled from the classical interior of the story and finds him/herself on the outside, unable to get back in. But it doesn’t end there. What is absolutely incredible about this story is that, instead of just leaving the reader stranded, as if to say, ‘isn’t this all absurd,’ the exterior of the piece becomes a kind of interior. David Foster Wallace has created a character that is meant to illicit a reaction rather than empathy, and the reaction we have - the revulsion we all feel for Johnny One-Arm - unites us as readers and reminds us “what it is to be fucking human.”