Girl With Curious Hair [Paperback]

David Foster Wallace (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 17, 1996

Remarkable, hilarious and unsettling re-imaginations of reality by "a dynamic writer of extraordinary talent " (Jennifer Levin, New York Times Book Review).

Girl with Curious Hair is replete with David Foster Wallace's Remarkable and unsettling reimaginations of reality. From the eerily "real," almost holographic evocations of historical figures like Lyndon Johnson and overtelevised game-show hosts and late-night comedians to the title story, where terminal punk nihilism meets Young Republicanism, Wallace renders the incredible comprehensible, the bizarre normal, the absurd hilarious, the familiar strange.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Postmodern short stories from Wallace satirize the absurdities of contemporary pop culture.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

In assessing this book, comparisons with Don DeLillo, Tom Robbins, and Robert Coover seem accurate, for Wallace is playful, idiomatically sharp, and intellectually engage. Overwhelming in his long, torrential sentences and his wit, he at times subjects us to overwritten, almost showy, passages, but his talent is undeniable. Included in this collection is a novella that examines, among other things, post-modernism. His (generally overlong) stories explore popular culture through the lives of a variety of characters: a lesbian with a three-year winning streak on Jeopardy, an actress anxious about appearing on David Letterman, a wealthy Republican yuppie who has a disturbing connection with some punk rockers; and Lyndon Johnson in a closeup that shows how well a historical figure can be used in fiction. Impressive in scope and savvy.
- Peter Bricklebank, City Coll., CUNY
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; Reprint edition (February 17, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393313964
• ISBN-13: 978-0393313963
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #36,034 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

David Foster Wallace wrote the acclaimed novels Infinite Jest and The Broom of the System and the story collections Oblivion, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, and Girl With Curious Hair. His nonfiction includes the essay collections Consider the Lobster and A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, and the full-length work Everything and More.  He died in 2008.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Worth My Appearance alone..., July 27, 2002

By 

"erudite98505" (Olympia, WA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Girl With Curious Hair (Paperback)

Why do so many reviews warn readers of the complexity of Infinte Jest? I found Infinite Jest to be a hundred times more readable than most of the stories in Girl with Curious Hair. The last story is ridicliously difficult to read and the ending makes no sense at all. Why would an author who deftly satirizes meta-fiction even in his first book (which some reviewers compared to the great metafictionists) purposefully try to be so difficult? Like the main character in Broom of the System tells Rick Vigorous: why don't you tell a real story instead of a story about a story? As a huge David Foster Wallace fan, I have to admit that I positively abhor Broom of the System and most of Girl With Curious Hair. They seem to be like cold, heartless exercises in how-avant-garde-can-I-be? and not at all pieces of writing that seemed like they were written by the author of Infinite Jest. But as my title eludes to, I am postively enamored with My Appearance. As an indictment of postmodern irony and its inability to truly accomplish anything, the story is flawless (well maybe the didactic dialogue can be a little off putting). More than any other living author, David Foster Wallace tackles the most important issues of the day to his generation and mine: drug abuse, depression, loneliness, irony, sex, and television. And, unlike other authors, he doesn't do it in a cute or ironic way. In an anthology of literary criticism from the 1950s, I read an article in which a critic expressed her feeling that writers of her decade had lost the ability to write about their culture and instead chose to focus on subjective explorations of individuals outside the bounds of society. I find current writers to be having the same difficulties, though instead of decadent novels about sex, drugs, and depression, todays writers write novels about mysterious byzantine paintings or soulless "satires" of the media in which the same sort of heartless humor and everyone's-a-whore philosophy found on late night TV is used to supposedly "skewer" that very phemenona. Those who are unafraid to face real, scary human realities like Wallace are the real heroes.

27 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book is funny, it's brilliant, it should..., November 12, 2001

By 

"verill" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Girl With Curious Hair (Paperback)

Ignoring all the fuzz about postmodern writing, I constantly found myself asking, what kind of impact did writers like Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo or William Gaddis might have had to other writers and, even more significant, what trace have they left in modern writing. In David Foster Wallace's collection of short stories, "Girl with curious hair", I found a large portion of my questions answered.

I've just finished it in almost one sitting, and like so often, when the book you've just finished didn't turned out to be total crap, you start missing its characters.
I miss Julie Smith from the "Jeopardy !" show, I wanna stick to "Sick Puppy" and his punky friends visiting a Keith Jarrett (!) concert. I feel sorry for old pal Chuck Nunn, jr., who, after a car accident, had his eyes constantly popping out their holes (!!). I deeply felt for the woman who "appeared in the David Letterman show", don't be nervous anymore ! And then finally there's David Boyd, first boy and close friend of the president of the United States, Lynton B.Johnson !

David Foster Wallace presents each of the five stories in a different tone, a different style: There's the more traditional narrative form in the first story, pure satire (with shades of Brett Easton Ellis's "American Psycho") in the second, and a haunting yet nightmarish and illogical atmosphere in the third one. The fourth story comes with a dry, almost documentary-like kind of prose, while the fifth and last story (the LBJ story) once again returns to more traditional grounds.

But don't worry: David Foster Wallace successfully manages to avoid pretentiousness or self-indulgence and never lets "Girl with curious hair" end up in a writing skill showcase !

This book is funny, it's brilliant, it should be regarded as a modern classic, but word comes around his other books are even better <...> oboy !

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Just Not What I'm Looking For, June 23, 2009

By 

Jon Peters (Michigan, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Girl With Curious Hair (Paperback)

True to form, D F W offers some very "literary" story, some po-mo fireworks, and caps it off with a silly sitcom feel. But I kept asking myself through the read, "Is this worth it?" Some stories, like "Little Expressionless Animals" yes, others like "John Billy" one has to ask, what's the point?

I agree with the earlier reviewers, Pynchon infiltrates this text, making these stories about rock stars, tv celebrities, and politicians seem less, well, unique. And while Pynchon steps back on the narrative and sort of accepts the absurdity of his premises (like in Vineland), Wallace also wants this sort of authenticity, this emotional punch, which at times seems contrived.

So, he is essentially writing for two (or three, including himself) audiences, the lit critics and the fans, and unfortunately he cannot hit both, so he settles on m.o.r. fare that's vaguely insulting to his characters. I mean, his characters, like Boyd in "Lyndon" come off as caricatures, silly stand-ins for the BIG POINT he wants to get across to the grad school audience.

I think D F W was talented and had a great deal to say, but I also think that he is best simply telling a story, instead of having to add literary value, because let's face it, there's only so much to the joke of a bunch of conservative "punkrockers" in "Girl with the Curious Hair."

My recommendation, pick this up, but do not feel beholden to finishing any one story.