The Hermeneutics of Suspicion in Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

David Foster Wallace’s famous discussion of postmodern irony has many overlaps with the recent reappraisal of ‘critique’ in books such as Rita Felski’s The Limits of Critique (2015). Wallace’s collection Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (1999) can be read as interrogating ‘the hermeneutics of suspicion’ through its presentation of characters who are attached to this mode of thinking. Although the collection offers a clear warning against the dangers of a hermeneutics of suspicion, the warning is complicated by the way that the text formally provokes its reader’s suspicion. Understanding the collections treatment of gender and sexuality, suspicion, and trust is particularly urgent in the context of #MeToo. This chapter argues that we should be suspicious of Wallace, and of his writing on gender, but that we should also pay attention to what the work says about suspicion. By illustrating the dangers of suspicious reading practices while simultaneously demanding such practices, the collection forces readers to think about their own role in deciding when to exercise and when to withhold suspicion.