Girl with Curious Hair

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Girl with Curious Hair  
Cover of Abacus 1997 reprint
Author David Foster Wallace
Country USA
Language English
Publisher W. W. Norton & Company
Publication date 1989
Media type Print (Paperback and Hardback)
Pages 373pp
ISBN 0-349-11102-2

Girl with Curious Hair is a collection of short stories by David Foster Wallace, first published in 1989. Though they are not related, many of the stories 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 stories also mock or criticise what Wallace saw as negative trends in the literary scene, including the cynical, amoral realism of 1980s "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".