Brief Interviews with Hideous Men is a collection of twenty-three short stories by David Foster Wallace. Several of the stories, all entitled "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men," are presented as transcripts of interviews with male subjects. Each male has some repulsive characteristic upon which he elaborates. The questions of the hypothetical interviewer are omitted from the transcripts, allowing the stories to focus on the men themselves. These stories set the tone for the rest of the collection, which is characterized by dark dry humor, alienation, and bizarre sexuality.