Girl with Curious Hair

by David Foster Wallace

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393313963
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	02/17/1996
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	87,662
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

David Foster Wallace was born in Ithaca, New York, in 1962 and raised in Illinois, where he was a regionally ranked junior tennis player. He received bachelor of arts degrees in philosophy and English from Amherst College and wrote what would become his first novel, The Broom of the System, as his senior English thesis. He received a masters of fine arts from University of Arizona in 1987 and briefly pursued graduate work in philosophy at Harvard University. His second novel, Infinite Jest, was published in 1996. Wallace taught creative writing at Emerson College, Illinois State University, and Pomona College, and published the story collections Girl with Curious Hair, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, Oblivion, the essay collections A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, and Consider the Lobster. He was awarded the MacArthur Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Award, and a Whiting Writers' Award, and was appointed to the Usage Panel for The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. He died in 2008. His last novel, The Pale King, was published in 2011.

Date of Birth:

February 21, 1962

Date of Death:

September 12, 2008

Place of Birth:

Ithaca, NY

Place of Death:

Claremont, CA

Education:

B.A. in English & Philosophy, Amherst College, 1985;MFA, University of Arizona, 1987

What People are Saying About This

T Coraghessan Boyle

David Foster Wallace turns the short story upside down and inside out, making the adjectives "inventive," "unique," and "original," seem blase.

Editorial Reviews

Turns the short story upside down and inside out, making the adjectives 'inventive,' 'unique,' and 'original' seem blasé.

T. Coraghessan Boyle

A collection of stories as varied in length and theme as they are imaginative, and downright bizarre as any collection by one author has a right to be.... Truly funny surreal humor.

Benedict Cosgrove - San Francisco Chronicle

Mr. Wallace brings us, time and again, to hidden, mythic places that are strange yet oddly familiar. He succeeds in restoring grandeur to modern fiction.

Jennifer Levin - New York Times Book Review

These stories say something serious and sincere about the world that the rest of us have to live in.

Madison Smartt Bell - Washington Post Book World

Wallace caused a critical stir with his first novel, The Broom of the System , and this volume of stories is likely to attract equal attention. His publisher talks about post -postmodernism, whatever that means, but there is a highly unusual eye and ear at work here, and an impressive armory of writerly skills. All too often, however, the stories seem like dazzling exercises, show-off pieces designed to provoke applause rather than expressions of a consistent vision. Two stories about the morbidly incestuous world of TV, ``Little Expressionless Animals'' and ``My Appearance,'' catch perfectly the obsessiveness and fatuity of quiz- and talk-show people, and ``Lyndon'' is a tour de force in which the late president looms very large indeed. The title story is an experiment in the outre, about a grotesque Los Angeles yuppie and his punk friends, that seems designed to shock rather than illuminate. In ``Say Never'' Wallace enters an Isaac Bashevis Singer world, though naturally he gives it an odd twist. And the longest and most ambitious story, ``Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way,'' deliberately flaunts writing-school experimentalism in its overwritten, satirical account of a Midwestern reunion of actors in McDonald's ads. Wallace has talent to burn, and is an endlessly inventive storyteller, but one wishes he wasn't also such an exhibitionist. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

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

Library Journal

These stories are serious and sincere about the world the rest of us have to live in. -- Washington Post Book World

Madison Smartt Bell

A dynamic writer of extraordinary talent -- Mr. Wallace brings us, time and again, to mythic places that are strange yet oddly familiar. He succeeds in restoring grandeur to modern fiction. -- New York Times Book Review

Jennifer Levin