Critical Response #1

A Brief Interview with Hideous Men

The way Wallace starts this story is definitely out of the ordinary. Not many stories begin in the middle so you actually have to catch up and figure out what’s going on, on your own. The description is incredible in this story the way you can really visualize what the arm looks like, it almost grossed me out just reading about it.
The one thing this author does a really great job of near the middle is making you feel bad for Johnny, but then revealing his true character. We get the vibe from him that he’s sort of sleazy and all he cares about is getting women into bed. He lures them in with arm, talking about how embarrassing it is and how ashamed he is of it, yet that is all part of his master plan, to get them to feel bad for him.
The author also does a really great job of telling this story so that we’re not really sure if we should believe the main character or not. He almost seems like he’s lying but part of us wants to believe his whole sob story.
They say the title is the window into the soul of the piece and in this story it is extremely true. A Brief Interview with Hideous Men right away tells us that this man is going to be a little sleazy. We already get the impression of this before we start to read the story, which could be a bad thing because we are assuming before reading which isn’t always a great idea.
I really like how you Wallace used long, run-on sentences to make the story feel like an actual interview. When most people are being interviewed, they just answer the question and move on. But Johnny keeps going off on these tangents about his arm and women and we’re not really sure what the interviewer asked, it’s left up to our imaginations.