David Foster Wallace's Brief Interviews With Hideous Men, part 1: Weaponised therapy-speak

Wallace's 1999 collection of short stories takes us to some uncomfortable places (and as always, is eerily prescient).

In this week's discussion we talk about his 'juvenilia' coming-of-age story Forever Overhead, his famous piece The Depressed Person, and a smattering of the titular brief interviews.

We kinda fucked up the format on this by trying to talk about everything. But salvaged some bits about nostalgia, the blurred lines between narcissism and depression, therapy culture, and why metafiction is played out.

CHAPTERS

• (00:00:00) quick blather and disclaimer
• (00:01:55) Forever Overhead: mainlining nostalgia of late childhood
• (00:09:04) starting to get sick of DFW’s tics and the metafiction schtick in general
• (00:14:54) Brief Interview #11 (the guy who keeps leaving his gf because she is worried about him leaving her again)
• (00:17:52) Brief Interview #3 (the airport shaggy dog story)
• (00:20:40) Brief Interview #31 (how a great lover really pleases a lady)
• (00:26:02) The Depressed Person: sincere or a satire of self-obsessed narcissists?
• (00:34:14) is identifying with this character a massive self-own
• (00:37:30) Should everyone really go to therapy?
• (00:44:24) Having a cute baby as cure for depression