Girl with Curious Hair is a collection of short stories written by David Foster Wallace. Released in 1989, it is Wallace's first collection of short stories.
Stories within[]
- Little Expressionless Animals - a short story about a Jeopardy champion
- Luckily the Account Representative Knew CPR - a short story set in a bland corporate office
- Girl with Curious Hair - a satire of Bret Easton Ellis and Young Republicans
- Lyndon - a short story examining Lyndon B. Johnson
- John Billy - a short story written in vernacular
- Here and There - a dialogue
- My Appearance - a short story about a Late Night with David Letterman interview
- Say Never - a story about an adulterous poet
- Everything is Green - a vignette
- Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way - a novella-length metafictional story based on John Barth's Lost in the Funhouse
Publisher's summary[]
Remarkable, hilarious and unsettling re-imaginations of reality by "a dynamic writer of extraordinary talent " (Jenifer 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, and the familiar strange.
See also[]
| Title | Author | Release date | Significance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lost in the Funhouse | John Barth | 1968 | A collection of short stories that influenced this collection |
| Pigeon Feathers and Other Stories | John Updike | 1962 | A collection of short stories written by one of Wallace's influences |
| The Informers | Bret Easton Ellis | 1994 | A collection of short stories written by one of Wallace's literary rivals |
| A Visit from the Goon Squad | Jennifer Egan | 2010 | A collection of short stories written by a similarly inventive author |
| Slow Learner | Thomas Pynchon | 1984 | A collection of short stories written by one of Wallace's influences |
| How We are Hungry | Dave Eggers | 2004 | A collection of short stories written by a similarly inventive author |
| The Rainbow Stories | William T. Vollmann | 1989 | A collection of short stories written by a similarly inventive author |
| The Angel Esmeralda | Don DeLillo | 2011 | A collection of short stories written by one of Wallace's influences |
| Works of David Foster Wallace | ||
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Novels | ||