A Radically Condensed History of Postindustrial Life

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TL;DR

Wallace's two-paragraph flash fiction, published in Ploughshares (Spring 1998) and used as the opening piece of Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (1999). In five sentences two strangers perform likeability at each other, then "each drove home alone, staring straight ahead, with the very same twist to their faces", while the man who introduced them privately dislikes them both and dissembles to "preserve good relations". It is a miniature of the same solipsism-and-failed-communication the novel dramatizes at length.

Key claims

The encounter. "When they were introduced, he made a witticism, hoping to be liked. She laughed very hard, hoping to be liked. Then each drove home alone, staring straight ahead, with the very same twist to their faces." The performance of sociability masks identical, unshared isolation.
The framing figure. "The man who'd introduced them didn't much like either of them, though he acted as if he did, anxious as he was to preserve good relations at all times." The closing shrug — "One never knew, after all, now did one" — folds the reader into the same managed insincerity.

Theories & evidence

CONNECTION: performed likeability masking identical, unshared isolation — the solipsism the novel dramatizes at length

Crux: communication-solipsism
Early text: Two strangers each make a bid to be liked and then "drove home alone, staring straight ahead, with the very same twist to their faces"; the man who introduced them "acted as if he did" like them, to "preserve good relations at all times." [¶1, ¶2]
IJ echo: The novel's pervasive solipsism and failed contact — Hal's interior that cannot reach the people watching him (scene 001); the currency of performed connection over real contact that runs through the E.T.A. and Ennet House worlds.
Weight: shared-preoccupation
Notes: Postdates the novel by two years (1998; opening of Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, 1999) — a shared preoccupation rather than a prefiguration: the same loneliness-under-sociability Wallace works at book length in Infinite Jest, here condensed to five sentences.

Themes

Solipsism and the failure of communication (identical isolation behind performed likeability); insincerity and social management (the introducer's dissembling); loneliness as the default of "postindustrial life."

Cross-references

dfw-my-appearance — the earlier fiction of managed, performed selves for an audience; both turn on likeability as performance and the isolation underneath.
The archive's other Wallace primary-fiction notes on communication and non-contact (the father-son non-communication material), which this piece distills to its smallest possible form.

Notable passages

"Then each drove home alone, staring straight ahead, with the very same twist to their faces."
"The man who'd introduced them didn't much like either of them, though he acted as if he did, anxious as he was to preserve good relations at all times."
"One never knew, after all, now did one."