Girl with Curious Hair is a collection of short stories by David Foster Wallace first published in 1989. Though the stories are not related, many of them share the theme of society's fascination with celebrity, some using real celebrities, including Alex Trebek, David Letterman and Lyndon Johnson, as fictional characters. Several of the stories also mock or criticize what Wallace saw as bad trends in the literary scene, including the cynical, amoral realism of 1980 "Brat Pack" writers such as Bret Easton Ellis, as well as postmodern literary criticism and metafiction. A novella, "Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way", draws heavily on John Barth's metafictional short story "Lost in the Funhouse".
[edit] List of Stories
Little Expressionless Animals
A story revolving around the sets of a TV Game Show Jeopardy!, and the coming together of two girls with abnormal childhoods
Luckily the Account Representative Knew CPR
A simple story where two executives at an unnamed corporation meet in the underground parking lot while leaving late, and the senior executive suddenly has a heart attack.
Girl with Curious Hair
A rich young democrat who is living an alternate life seeped in punkrock, spends an evening at a piano concert where his girlfriend is distracted by a girl with curious hair
Lyndon
A fictional account of a young man David Boyd working closely with American president Lyndon Baines Johnson, and getting entangled personally
John Billy
Here and There
A boy and girl relate the story of their relationship simultaneously
My Appearance
Say Never
Everything Is Green
Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way
