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Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Postmodern short stories from Wallace satirize the absurdities of contemporary pop culture.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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.
- 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.
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Most helpful customer reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
David Foster Wallace,
This review is from: Girl With Curious Hair (Paperback)
David Foster Wallace is not the type of writer who writes for the mass-market reading public. That is by no means a bad thing. He is I guess what you would call a "writer's writer"; a writer that is fashionable to study in your graduate creative writing classes at Brown, but all in all is not really that fun to read. I've just finished (more or less) his inordinately self-indulgent compendium of postmodern stories (oblique references to our blooming age of popular culture) that is "Girl with Curious Hair." The collection has an auspicious beginning with a droll story of game show hosts and complicated lovers; then strays with the second story (about an Account Representative giving the Vice President of Overseas Production CPR--why do I care? Not enough to peruse it so as to grasp the implicit meaning). Then it gets back on track with the title story (one of the two good stories, not counting the first) where an unlikely friendship cultivates between the apotheosis of 1980s yuppiedom and a group of nihilistic punks, a real treat. The other good story in this collection is My Appearance, which delineates a middle-aged television star's foray into the realm of late nate television mania--a smart and critical insight into the state of cynism in America. That was about all this book did for me; definatley not warranting the purchase price. I occasionally found Wallace's writing style witty and biting, but ultimately too bombastic and showy--ornamental to the point of shameless grandiloquence. I haven't read his much hallowed brainchild "Infinite Jest," so David Foster Wallace hasn't rightly merited a particular partiality in me yet, but I'll try some more of his material before I completely give up on him. This book just did not work for me.
4.0 out of 5 stars
An Entertaining Mixed Bag,
By Matthew Schratz (Lockport, NY USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Girl With Curious Hair (Paperback)
I read Girl With Curious Hair after Infinite Jest, so I thought I had some idea of what to expect. The stories in this book are so different from one another, and from Jest, that I shall now review them separately.Little Expressionless Animals-This story blended the absurd business of game shows perfectly with the absurd story of a savant lesbian and her autistic brother. This was probably my favorite story. Luckily the Account Representative Knew CPR- This story was the very crisp. It is short, and it is still detailed, but it is not an extravaganza like the others. It is a good story, though, and very clever. Girl With Curious Hair- This story is hilarious and very perverse. My brother says it is pro-Republicanism, but I do not believe him. It may be too perverted for many people. Lyndon- This is a good example of DFW's ability to recreate actual famous people. It is also a comment on the different kinds of love people have. I don't think that I understood it. John Billy- John Billy is an excellent example of DFW's style. It is a simple story about the hometown hero Chuck Nunn Jr, told in a complicatedly Kansan dialect and with a bizzarre twist at the end. Here and There- This is a story that I enjoyed very much. It is a dialectic account of the failure of a genius to love. It has an anti-ending similar to Infinite Jest, though, which many find troublesome. My Appearance- This may be the best story in the collection. It explores the conflicting themes of sincerity/naivite and irony/cynicism. It also stars David Letterman. Say Never- This story was about a man who cheats on his wife and then with his brother's girlfriend, and then confesses. It is told from his p.o.v., the brother's, and their mother's friend Labov. I didn't like this one that much, but the style is, as usual, amazing. Everything is Green- This one is only two pages long and doesnt make any sense as far as I can tell. If it were more than two pages long, I might advise skipping it. But then, if it were more than two pages long, it might be good. Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way- This novella made me think alot, about stories and postmodernism and commercialism. I liked it alot. However, like Barth's Lost in the Funhouse that inspired it, at the end I did not understand it. On the whole, this is an excellent collection and there is something to like about each piece, except maybe Everything is Green. I recommend it and Infinte Jest to pretty much anybody.
3.0 out of 5 stars
Worth My Appearance alone...,
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.
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