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| Girl With Curious Hair | 
 enlarge | Author: David Foster Wallace
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy New: $7.98
You Save: $6.97 (47%)
New (24) Used (16) from $7.04
Avg. Customer Rating:  27 reviews
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 373
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.5 x 1
ISBN: 0393313964
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780393313963
Publication Date: March 1996
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
This collection could possibly represent the first flowering of post-postmoderism: visions of the world that re-imagine reality as more realistic than we can imagine. A compelling presence of a holograph and the up-to-the-second feeling of the most advanced art.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 22 more reviews...
 Terrible writer and book September 14, 2008
2 out of 6 found this review helpful
David Foster Wallace is one of those really bad writers who decided, long ago, that he would hide his lack of talent, acumen, and skill behind a blizzard of words, then laugh at anyone unwilling to engage them as not understanding his genius. This is a symptom of what is known as Postmodernism. The fact is, though, that PoMo has been passe for nearly twenty years. It was in its last throes when he first got going, in the late 1980s. It's always bizarre to read -ismic devotees who are waiting at railyards that no longer are served, and this is what DFW is, in spades. Basically, if you want to be PoMo you must lack humor, love cliches, be rapt by stilted conversations and stereotyped caricatures, and be able to type on a word processor as quickly as you can for as long as you can and then hope someone with an even more horrid life than yours will sort through your genius. In 1996, this method resulted in a reputed three thousand plus piece of lard first draft that DFW turned into an editor, as he was apparently oblivious to what was good or bad within, which was eventually trimmed to about two thousand in a penultimate draft, which was then cut to about twelve hundred pages, and this became his infamous novel, Infinite Jest- a work that has already made the lists of some of the worst books ever published, even as others decry it, what else?, genius. That book, however, is not the subject of this review.
The tale Luckily The Account Representative Knew CPR is a tale with potential to be passable, due to a few nice descriptions, and shows that at least DFW possessed some potential, unlike Dave Eggers. But, then self-conscious posing does it in....Here is the excerpt:
That night Gimlet and Tit fellated me, and Boltpin did as well. Gimlet and Tit made me happy but Boltpin did not, therefore I am not a bisexual. Gimlet allowed me to burn her slightly and I felt that she was an outstanding person. Big acquired a puppy from the alley behind their house in east Los Angeles and he soaked it with gasoline and they allowed me to set it on fire in the basement studio of their rented home, and we all stood back to give it room as it ran around the house several time.
While this is immature self-conscious writing, it also gives no insight to its cartoonish speaker and comments in no way on the action. And this sort of masturbation is the sum of the story times a hundred. It is just masturbation, pure and simple. And so go the rest of the tales in the book, and the last one- a novella called Westward The Course Of Empire Takes Its Way, combines all the flaws of the prior tales into one ridiculous piece whose self-consciousness doesn't even succeed in self-parody, with such subtitles as Foreground That Intrudes But's Really Too Tiny To Even See: Propositions About A Lover. I won't even get into the supposed narrative of the tale since that's not the point of the writing- it's really a comment on non-narrative cast as narrative about nothing- got it? Its only real points are to seem cool, and woo gullible coeds. DFW rocks, dude!
Please, do not even think of trying the old dodge of claiming I've quoted DFW's crap out of context, because PoMo negates context! And when I say what something's about, in his work, I really mean that in a vague sense, as PoMo is never really `about' a thing. Thus, his work lacks connections to the outer world, despite the name dropping, and is suffused with detailed minutiae that serves no purpose, and is so ill-written, that even were there a sense of purpose under the lard, no one would care to extract it. In short, self-indulgent writing is merely self-indulgent writing, not daring, much less innovative, and to even call this writing trash is to demean the hardy biosphere of vermin. Fluff is the heart of his work, and solipsistic nihility its soul. DFW is, at best, `potentially mediocre', and that might be attained in twenty or thirty years, if he gets cracking now. Of course, history shows that in about fifty or so years this sort of crap will be openly seen as the long practical joke it is. Good, and especially great, writing forces connections upon a reader by bringing things up from the depths to the pellicle of its engagement, and allowing the reader to pop the bubbles or not. PoMo and DFW have no such aspiration, and therefore no bubbles surface in their anaerobic cesspool. Now, breathe out, slowly....
 Dead Letter Office? September 10, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
From the author of the more notable Infinite Jest and Broom of the System, this is one of his earlier works, a collection of short stories. This was published in 1989, and I suspect many of these were written before Broom of the System--some have the feel of REM's Dead Letter Office kind of thing: that perhaps some of these were written initially during freelance days or during a stint as an MFA student or in a writing workshop. However, the positive side of this is that since these were written earlier on, there is significant professional editing happening as oversight to the author's work. Rejoice! I believe later we all suffer that this truly gifted author has somehow leveraged art hysteria about himself to absolve his work from any significant editing, which can leave us with a 1,000 page nanoscopic eruption about over-drugged kids in a tennis camp (Infinite Jest). Exaggeration aside, the beauty of Wallace's writing is here in this book without the footnotes, pretension, and long-windedness.
In Girl with Curious Hair, there are ten stories, and they're truly a mixed bag. In "Luckily the Account Representative Knew CPR" a tight, deadpan, nifty little tale which leaves no aftertaste. Very different from the somewhat political, dark, sonorous "Lyndon" which posits a steamy, insider's glance at the LBJ meta-inner White House crowd. Some, like "John Billy" are better left unread, and the last and longest story which starts out in a Writing Seminar attended by aspiring novelists seems too unrealistic right from the start to take hold. The eponymous story "Girl with Curious Hair" has so much potential, and a Bret Easton Ellis meets Salinger energy, and really no where to go: it exists in it's small pond but if this were exported to an ocean (a novel) or a river (a screenplay), some larger plot would perhaps ruin it. Although there are sparks of brilliance, there is a lot of glop in here which makes this more like a treasure hunt than a good back to front read for anyone other than devotees of David Foster Wallace.
 "John Billy" levitates ! May 4, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Worth buying the book for this story alone . " John Billy " deserves to be read aloud in the streets by performers dressed in character , and or but at least read aloud . The hallucinatory "okie" language Wallace has invented is daring , maybe a little challenging , but he pulls it off . Part of my love of his best work is due to the way he , like Pynchon , demands something from the reader . ( comparisons , btw stop there ) . Mindful ( open ) readers with a bit of patience will find themselves inclined to discourse in "john Billy" long after finishing the story. Nearly as addictive as the " infinite jest " . A roller coaster drop into the surreal . Like Tom Robbins turned up to 11 . Just let go, and but hold on !
Brilliant, funny, disturbing January 29, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This collection of short stories is, sadly, much stronger than the more recent batch released in Oblivion. D.F. Wallace still seems stymied by the mammoth success he generated with Infinite Jest; it's been 12 years and still no new novel. If Oblivion is any indication, maybe he used up most of his brilliance with I.J.
The good news is that this book contains some real gems of short fiction. The title story is one of the most frightening, deeply disturbing pieces I've ever read. Nothing supernatural happens, but its depiction of dementia spawned by the horrific child abuse in the narrator's past really gets under your skin. Other strong entries are "Little Expressionless Animals" and "My Appearance." The final story, though cited as a precursor of sorts to Infinite Jest, didn't do much for me.
All in all, this is a stunning piece of work that goes far beyond the boundaries often associated with the short story format.
DFW, Fiction and DFW and Fiction December 28, 2004
4 out of 7 found this review helpful
Okay, so here's the deal w/ DFW: the guy is extremely intelligent. he is also overtly aware of his intelligence and displays it all over the place. this bothers people. some things to remember and know about DFW: he was a philo. major as an undergrad; his first book was an investigation of the theories of ludwig wittgenstein, also an overly intelligent fellow and very hard to follow. Something else: in this collection of short-stories, the one titled "the girl w/ curious hair," DFW displays that he also knows one thing or another about fiction and that he has read a lot of it and doesn't like most of it. the title story, "girl w cur..." is a cool story is you think you like punks and nihilists and sado-masochism and other stuff, but it helps to know something about bret easton ellis's stuff, and to know that DFW hates (HATES!) BEE w/ some serious passion. Then there's the two stories about real-world characters, "little expressionless animals"--the opening piece, and i think it's pretty damn cool--and "lyndon" are investigations/explorations of using "real-world characters" (which for legal reasons has to be roundly denied) that was pioneered by the exceedingly weird and totally fun robert coover who wrote "the public burning" whose main character was richard milhouse nixon and was the first book to use a "RWC" as a protagonist. so there's that. then there's the piece of cathartic/psyhological diaglogue, in which DFW dips his fingers, there's "john billy" which is kind of a stab at faulkner but is also pretty cool and a really great read near the end (which i find is pretty true of most of DFW's stuff, it takes a while to build up and the guy is a straight-up bonafide (a word he hates) genius at bringing it all together and making you feel good when you finish a story). there's some other stuff in there (like "everything's green" which is only two pages but still isn't his shortest piece which was only like five lines, and both of those are cool). finally, there's the final fiction, a novella of about like 150 pages or something and it's all-over john barth (author of "the floating opera," "giles goat-boy" (which is way weird), "the sot-weed factor" and others) principally his exlposive collection of shorts, "lost in the funhouse." ytou should read that entire book (it's short) in order to really get what DFW is after in "westward the course of empire makes its way," and he's really after "metafiction," look it up. so this is all to say that DFW is writing fiction, and it's way cool fiction, well written and crafted, with interesting characters and solid "stories," but it is way helpful to know his sources. this kind of fiction--intertexual and in some ways needing a well-literary-read reader--is not for all. it's some damn fun stuff on it's own though. i recommend DFW to those w/ an interest in where "serious literary fiction" might be making it's way; to those who also enjoy and appreciate vollmann, powers, pynchon (seriously pynchon), gaddis, barth, maybe updike a little but not totally, and some other guys, yeah, mostly white males, but also cynthia ozick, whose fiction is slamming, especially her shorts which are hard to come by. so there's that, which is nice.
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