This collection is built from stories, fragments, questionnaires, monologues and the recurring “interviews” of the title: one-sided conversations in which men explain their desires, cruelties, grievances and elaborate methods of self-exoneration. 

The book moves through sexual shame, emotional dependency, depression and the fear of genuine intimacy, repeatedly asking whether extreme self-awareness produces moral clarity or merely more sophisticated camouflage. Its comedy is ferocious, though the collection is not simply a tribunal; Wallace remains uncomfortably alert to the loneliness, panic and thwarted desire inside the grotesque performances. 

Voices interrupt themselves, footnotes colonise the page, and stories dismantle their own premises while the reader is still inside them. It is a book for readers interested in experimental fiction, masculinity and the hazards of turning every feeling into an argument.

Abacus paperback, 2000; first British edition. Light edge and corner wear; clean interior.