Secret to Brief Interviews, revealed?

RP knows how the kids love David Foster Wallace, so here's an interesting bit YPTR dug up last night from a review of Brief Interviews With Hideous Men:

The lengthy notes in Brief Interviews, like those in Infinite Jest and in some of Wallace's journalism, imply that his imagination is constricted by any form but especially by essays and stories. In places, this collection appears to be a para- or proto-novel, very small parts and large sections struggling to cohere, to complete a larger pattern. "Octet," which has only five parts, may be an internal model of the book. Along with two versions of "Adult World," Wallace includes two two-page pieces titled "The Devil Is a Busy Man" and three equally short numbered pieces with the title "Yet Another Example of the Porousness of Certain Borders." The borders between sections are porous. Stories not in the "Interviews" are about hideous men, and one story is narrated by the most shameful person in the collection, a man who, on his deathbed, reviles his son for being his son.

The eighteen "Interviews" may also be secretly linked--if they have been conducted by the same interviewer. They are dated and numbered but presented out of both sequences. If rearranged chronologically, the "Interviews" tell a unified though episodic story of a woman (Q) who, after being abandoned by her lover, travels America trying to understand what men want, what they like and perhaps whether or not they like her. The last "Interview" ends with "oh no not again behind you look out!" so the story may have a hideous, possibly violent end for "Q."

Interesting idea--I'll have to try this one and see how it works.

Comments

[CAAF]

That's really interesting. Like the Wyatt interpretation of that "Oblivion" story, it seems like a potential good puzzle-solve. Pretty sneaky, DFW.