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133rd out of 1,186 books
—
879 voters
Girl With Curious Hair
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 incredibl...more
Paperback, 373 pages
Published
March 19th 1996
by W. W. Norton & Company
(first published 1989)
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Oct 08, 2012
s.penkevich
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
Great introduction to DFW
After finishing David Foster Wallace’s Girl With Curious Hair, I had to step back awhile before reviewing in fear I would simply come across as an overzealous cheerleader yelling ‘Give me a D!....Give me a F!...Give me a W!....’. Like a teenage romance, I was so blinded by my love for this collection and author that I wasn’t sure exactly what it was I loved so much, and if this brightly burning passion was distracting me from the flaws and faults that I wouldn’t realize were there until much lat...more
57 likes · like · see review
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BEGINNING OF AN AFFAIR
I saw him many times around here, since I joined the GR Club. Sometimes having tete-a-tete with one of my friends and sometimes being the cynosure of some group discussions. I thought of approaching him on many occasions but I didn’t want to come up as somewhat forward and I wasn’t even sure if he was my TYPES. Then a new year party invite brought us face to face with each other.
David: Hi! How you doin?
Me: *thinking about what should be an appropriate reply in correct Engli...more
I saw him many times around here, since I joined the GR Club. Sometimes having tete-a-tete with one of my friends and sometimes being the cynosure of some group discussions. I thought of approaching him on many occasions but I didn’t want to come up as somewhat forward and I wasn’t even sure if he was my TYPES. Then a new year party invite brought us face to face with each other.
David: Hi! How you doin?
Me: *thinking about what should be an appropriate reply in correct Engli...more
47 likes · like · see review
(The following came up in the comment thread of my review of Oblivion: Stories.)
The more I think about it the more I would recommend that people new to DFW start with his first short stories collection Girl with Curious Hair. His first two books (the novel/his college thesis paper (!)) The Broom of the System and the recently aforementioned short stories collection probably have a lower net level of run-on sentences and a more "accessible" style on the whole.
Starting with Infinite Jest as I did...more
The more I think about it the more I would recommend that people new to DFW start with his first short stories collection Girl with Curious Hair. His first two books (the novel/his college thesis paper (!)) The Broom of the System and the recently aforementioned short stories collection probably have a lower net level of run-on sentences and a more "accessible" style on the whole.
Starting with Infinite Jest as I did...more
23 likes · like · see review
I am a DFW completist. Recently I have been suffering an anxiety that I had in fact not completed his first book of short stories, Girl with Curious Hair. It was time to reread it and banish those anxieties. In fact, best of my memory, I had cut out several years back mid-stride of “Lyndon.” Never mind why. Who would want to ask? I had, with clear evidence of memory, read the entirety of “Westward” under a tree in my backyard, upon a blanket (mom-made; Raggedy Ann and Andy pattern which had once...more
20 likes · like · see review
Difficult, brilliant, jarring, funny, ironically earnest and earnestly ironic with the limpidity of apostasy and the remote functionality of an egg-white toaster, I just wanted to grab myself by the front of my shirt and pull myself into this dizzyingly dexterous series of fictional contortions, wending through the labyrinth of self-aware, polymathic intelligence and meta-situations to find the author—standing apart from creations that the reader assists in imbuing with life with the melancholy...more
18 likes · like · see review
Oct 06, 2008
Núria
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
los que adoran el posmodernismo, los que odian el posmodernismo, los fans de la cultura popular,
Mi reseña propiamente dicha de 'La niña del pelo raro'
4 + 5 + 3 + 4 + 2 + 5 + 4 + 3 + 3 + 3 = 36
36 : 10 = 3,6
Ésta sería la fórmula que explicaría mi valoración de los relatos de 'La niña del pelo raro'. Por supuesto, esto no quiere decir absolutamente nada. Debí leer este libro por primera vez debe hacer unos cinco años. Desde entonces, aunque no lo parezca, debo haber cambiado. Aunque sólo sea porque ahora 'La niña del pelo raro' me ha gustado mucho más, supongo que porque he pillado muchas má...more
4 + 5 + 3 + 4 + 2 + 5 + 4 + 3 + 3 + 3 = 36
36 : 10 = 3,6
Ésta sería la fórmula que explicaría mi valoración de los relatos de 'La niña del pelo raro'. Por supuesto, esto no quiere decir absolutamente nada. Debí leer este libro por primera vez debe hacer unos cinco años. Desde entonces, aunque no lo parezca, debo haber cambiado. Aunque sólo sea porque ahora 'La niña del pelo raro' me ha gustado mucho más, supongo que porque he pillado muchas má...more
3 likes · like · see review
Edit again: So even though I haven't read all of DFW's work yet, I think this book would be a good place to start for someone who has read none. Originally I was telling people Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, but that's just because that's the first one I read and I loved it. This collection is... fucking brilliant. It's beyond my ability to really say more. I remember I was reading "Little Expresionless Animals" the day before DFW died, and I was like "oh my god I can't believe someone this...more
7 likes · like · see review
Jan 21, 2013
Stephen M
rated it
4 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
Those interested in a great authors' beginnings
Recommended to Stephen M by:
Alex Ponzo
enyways=mah peeps sayin i red 2 much da dee eff dub but ah say tat i can neva red 2 much ah him and i can red whatevs u kow? example mah fav book [effinite gest:] ess dah best i wont red 5th times an i can neva red no buk afta an knot tink a hem, dee eff dub, an how much i luv him fur laiffe all da time u kow? example i will neva forget abut da gurrll wit tha hare an how much i luv da vice of dee eff dub an how he writs all laike mest up an weeeeeeurd but at da sam time kinda buitiful cause heh...more
16 likes · like · see review
Forgot that I read this until I flipped through it at B&N today. Oddly, too, the B-52's "Mesopotamia" came on over the store's muzak system. I mean, seriously?
I ain't no student (feel those vibrations) of ancient culture...before I talk, I should read a book (Mesopotamia, that's where I want to go)
I ain't no student (feel those vibrations) of ancient culture...before I talk, I should read a book (Mesopotamia, that's where I want to go)
"Little Expressionless Animals," the title story, "Lyndon," and "Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way" are the highlights of this collection.
There is a sense of academic experimentation here. A sense of a writer trying to write something like his later work but not having gotten there yet, except maybe in "Lyndon, "Little Expressionless Animals," and parts of the novella that ends the book: "Westward," which functions essentially as a mission statement w/r/t his later work.
Hence, the book...more
There is a sense of academic experimentation here. A sense of a writer trying to write something like his later work but not having gotten there yet, except maybe in "Lyndon, "Little Expressionless Animals," and parts of the novella that ends the book: "Westward," which functions essentially as a mission statement w/r/t his later work.
Hence, the book...more
I feel like I've been reading far too many amazing books recently. Girl with Curious Hair had some of the greatest short stories I have ever read in it. I've read most of Oblivion, his other short story collection which was more recent, and only connected with a few of the stories, and they had very similar styles (not to say it was awful). Every single story in this collection, however, is unique, different, has a different voice, a different tone, and a different subtext.
My favorite stories ar...more
My favorite stories ar...more
uneven is the word. also "too clever by half" is a few more words. I actually really liked most of the stories here, but the ones I didn't like (John Billy, Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way) were invariably the longer ones, so on a page by page basis I found it a bit whatever. there is a lot of metafiction stuff in this collection, which I am not so into. like, the longest story here (Westward...) is supposedly an extended satire of a postmodern short story by John Barth, Lost in the...more
I read this as an act of mourning for a writer I never understood. Nonetheless, his death shook me to the core for here was a man who had many things I've spent the last few years of my life desiring like an enthusiastic Bears fan. I'd attempted Infinite Jest earlier this year and had given up, feeling his verbal pyrotechnics would only end in nausea. Outpourings of grief on various web addresses painted an entirely new portrait of the man; one I had missed on my initial encounter with his work....more
These are dense, Pynchon-esque stories of unrooted observation that may be Wallace's most accessible work (being his second book). They have not aged well since 1989, however. Eighteen years ago, I loved the title story; today, not so much. Of them, only two in my view retain their whomp: the concluding "Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way," which falls short of brilliance only because it owes such an obvious bebt to John Barth, and the collection's best piece, "My Appearance," about a p...more
2 likes · like · see review
1/14/08: Holy Crap I'd give almost all my belongings to Satan to be Davester Wallace or to have at least 70% of his talent as a writer. This book is awesome surprise surprise my favorite stories were My Appearance and the title story and then the last one was so crazy it's like woah!!!
9/20/12: Still a great collection the second time around, and with a much better understanding of Wallace. The final novella definitely looms over the entire collection, making it pretty difficult to come away from...more
9/20/12: Still a great collection the second time around, and with a much better understanding of Wallace. The final novella definitely looms over the entire collection, making it pretty difficult to come away from...more
Don't hate on me...I know there are serious David Foster Wallace fans out there...I'm personally acquainted with a serious fan (she's a friend of mine who I happen to respect, especially when it comes to taste in books) who shakes her head when I tell her that I can barely tolerate David Foster Wallace...There's something too disgusting about this one...I'm in favor of authorial innovation, but I think Wallace's writing is just arrogant...He's passed off as a "writer's writer" but I refuse to bu...more
2 likes · like · see review
…e tante altre idee che non riesco ad esprimere come vorrei.
"La ragazza dai capelli strani" mi ha dato l’impressione di una collection di racconti creati dai più talentuosi e originali nuovi autori americani, tanto sembrano diverse le menti, gli stili, i temi che sostengono e caratterizzano ogni episodio. Di conseguenza mi è difficile concepire un unico commento organico a nove schegge fra loro così distanti e men che meno a stilarne una graduatoria.
Arrendendomi all’inafferrabile eterogeneità d...more
"La ragazza dai capelli strani" mi ha dato l’impressione di una collection di racconti creati dai più talentuosi e originali nuovi autori americani, tanto sembrano diverse le menti, gli stili, i temi che sostengono e caratterizzano ogni episodio. Di conseguenza mi è difficile concepire un unico commento organico a nove schegge fra loro così distanti e men che meno a stilarne una graduatoria.
Arrendendomi all’inafferrabile eterogeneità d...more
DRW's 1989 short story collection was a wonderful precursor to the ingenious magnitude of the later INFINITE JEST. If anything connects these stories (apart from DFW's intrepid experimentation), it is an abiding concern with the absurdities, dangers, and cliffs of various kinds that are so easy to fall off in the modern world. More specifically in some of the very best stories, the effects of media/sensory/stimulant overload take precedence. Some of the stories work better than others for me, wh...more
Some of these stories were very tedious to read, yet I was left with a sense of-- I feel like they made me smarter. I mean it is not surprising that I might feel like a better reader and writer after having read stories composed of sentences sometimes spanning two pages. But sentences that work and can be followed to humorous conclusions. The final story (or novella) of the grandiose title "Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way," has the best examples of masturbatory sentence-running-on, a...more
The adult world, in Dave's opinion, has turned out to be a basically shifty, shitty place. It's risky and often sad and always wildly insecure. It beats him over the head, just how insecure and fragile is his place in his own lifetime. He knows, now, that nearly everything you call Yours in the world can be taken away from you by other people, assuming that they want it enough. ("Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way")
I have borrowed all the DFW books the library had available in order to...more
I have borrowed all the DFW books the library had available in order to...more
This book is very clever because every story is post-something. Little Expressionless Animals, Lydon, My Appearance- Post-Delillo. Luckily...- post Beckett. Girl with curious Hair- post-Easton Ellis. John Billy- post-Faulkner. Here and There- post writing workshop (okay, that's a stretch.) Say Never- post Roth. Everything is Green- I really don't know, but induction says that this, too, is post-something. And the mother of all the posts, 'Westward the Course of Empire,' is post-Barth (unfortunat...more
The sentence that broke me on page 235:
Sternberg had Mark so pegged by the time they'd all met as arranged at Maryland International Airport and departed via red-eye for Chicago's O'Hare, thence by complimentary LordAloft copter to Collision, Illinois, and the scheduled reunion of everyone who has ever been in a McDonald's commercial, arranged by J.D. Steelritter Advertising and featuring a party to end all parties, a spectacular collective reunion commercial, the ribbon-cutting revelation of t...more
So, I've been made fun of for getting excited about something or other and then running around proselytizing to people in the name of whatever that something or other happens to be this month, or whatever, but for now I'm just going to blame such skepticism and hostility toward excitement on our oh! so cold postmodern world in which we're afraid of expressing or hearing expressed anything "real" or "genuine," to paraphrase the thematic thrust of the stories in Girl with Curious Hair, about whose...more
It doesn't feel quite right to rate a book after only finishing 7/10 of its stories, but short of some traumatic illness that also makes it impossible for new books to be delivered to me, I will never finish this.
I am happy to have read it. Refusing to even attempt to read Infinite Jest based on its book cover seems narrow-minded, but now I have a good reason. I recognize that DFW was probably very bright, and funny, and his writing clearly connected with many people. But things felt a little t...more
I am happy to have read it. Refusing to even attempt to read Infinite Jest based on its book cover seems narrow-minded, but now I have a good reason. I recognize that DFW was probably very bright, and funny, and his writing clearly connected with many people. But things felt a little t...more
"An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way." -Charles Bukowski
And that's why I find DFW so aggravating. He is both an intellectual and an artist, his prose meandering and wandering in and out of gorgeous simplicity to complex minutiae, reducing life's complexities to beautiful poetry and then inflating the smallest incidents into something hyper-inflated, engorged and bloated beyond necessity.
But he can brilliantly give weight to the most med...more
And that's why I find DFW so aggravating. He is both an intellectual and an artist, his prose meandering and wandering in and out of gorgeous simplicity to complex minutiae, reducing life's complexities to beautiful poetry and then inflating the smallest incidents into something hyper-inflated, engorged and bloated beyond necessity.
But he can brilliantly give weight to the most med...more
May 28, 2011
MJ Nicholls
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
short-stories,
merkins
My main response to reading Wallace is that I’m not clever enough to read Wallace. I go through long periods in his fiction not knowing what the hell is happening and what the narrator is narrating. My second response is that Wallace wrote fiction with a universal appeal, inscrutable at times, but with a heart and a mind built by NASA. Despite this, despite his intention to strike a basic human chord, his fiction is largely the domain of the hyper-literate, or folks like me, straining to be hype...more
21 likes · like · see review
Well, I liked it said Florence.
I thought the title story was fucking hilarious actually and set the tone for the entire volume - from what I'd understood about DFWallace I'd expected someone a lot more serious rather than the Burroughsian dislocations to be found in this volume. 'Lyndon' I thought was not all that but did give me dreams about working for the Head of the Civil Service. The final story is obviously in dialogue (but that's what you're supposed to say!) with John Barth's 'Lost in th...more
I thought the title story was fucking hilarious actually and set the tone for the entire volume - from what I'd understood about DFWallace I'd expected someone a lot more serious rather than the Burroughsian dislocations to be found in this volume. 'Lyndon' I thought was not all that but did give me dreams about working for the Head of the Civil Service. The final story is obviously in dialogue (but that's what you're supposed to say!) with John Barth's 'Lost in th...more
Finally started this while waiting for my delinquent copy of Infinite Jest to arrive.
Almost as fascinating as an artifact as it is a collection of stories, which would usually be an ominous thing; a lot of it seems devoted, like Hemingway's vicious Sherwood Anderson parody or Fitzgerald's reading lists in This Side of Paradise, to establishing Wallace's place against a literary landscape that's basically alien to us now. In the 23 years since this came out the minimalism he runs ragged in "Litt...more
Almost as fascinating as an artifact as it is a collection of stories, which would usually be an ominous thing; a lot of it seems devoted, like Hemingway's vicious Sherwood Anderson parody or Fitzgerald's reading lists in This Side of Paradise, to establishing Wallace's place against a literary landscape that's basically alien to us now. In the 23 years since this came out the minimalism he runs ragged in "Litt...more
This collection is quite the mixed bag. Contrary to my expectations, two of my favorite stories featured celebrities as major characters: Alex Trebek in "Little Expressionless Animals" and David Letterman in "My Appearance." The title story is also great, and "Say Never" is very strong. "Lyndon" has many fine qualities, but runs on a bit and concludes in a surreal manner that feels like Wallace just bailed out. This is even more the case with "John Billy." When in doubt about how to wrap up a st...more
You can't be cool unless you like David Foster Wallace. It's like a rule or something. You have to get it. You have to even refer to him by his initials: DFW. Like a password; so the other members of the cognescenti will know you are one of them, one of the cool ones. And, well, I would certainly like to be cool. So I gave this book a try. Actually, I gave the title story, Girl with the Curious Hair, four tries. I am sorry to admit that I am not cool.
Girl with the Curious Hair is about a doucheb...more
Girl with the Curious Hair is about a doucheb...more
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David Foster Wallace worked surprising turns on nearly everything: novels, journalism, vacation. His life was an information hunt, collecting hows and whys. "I received 500,000 discrete bits of information today," he once said, "of which maybe 25 are important. My job is to make some sense of it." He wanted to write "stuff about what it feels like to live. Instead of being a relief from what it fe...more
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“Look. Listen. Use ears I'd be proud to call our own. Listen to the silence behind the engine's noise. Jesus, Sweets, listen. Hear it? It's a love song.
For whom?
You are loved.”
—
23 people liked it
For whom?
You are loved.”
“And he wishes, in the cold quiet of his archer's heart, that he himself could feel the intensity of their reconciliations as strongly as he feels that of their battles.”
—
20 people liked it
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