David Foster Wallace is an award-winning American writer and considered one of the most innovative writers of our time. Girl with Curious Hair is a collection of short stories without specific connection to one another, but that all contain a distinctly sharp commentary on the modern era of media-overload, relationships, and society. It is both a feat and a feast to digest. But taken in small bites, it’s savory and delicious.
Tightly packed with inscrutable detail, it seems possible Wallace has used every word in the English language (or known to man). Each sentence seems stripped of anything remotely superfluous, and jammed with his blunt and descriptive storytelling. It’s exhausting—and I mean that in a good way.
Each piece is a unique narrative, written in not one singular style, each centered on human connection. Luckily the Account Representative Knew CPR, a seemingly detached, informational and acutely detailed account of a life-or-death situation between two executives in a parking garage, somehow turns poignant within the stark framework crafted by Wallace and by the severe reality of the moment.
"The Account Representative watched as the Vice President in Charge of Overseas Production pirouetted, raked a raw clean streak in a cement pillar’s soot and clipped a WRONG WAY sign’s weighted concrete doughnut with a roundabout heel as he pirouetted, reached out at air, hunched, crumpled, and fell. He seemed to fall, the Account Representative remarked, watching, surprised out of time, at about half the rate the average thing takes to fall."
Wallace features pop-culture icons, such as Jeopardy’s Alex Trebek, David Letterman, and Lyndon Johnson. A favorite, My Appearance, is the story of a TV actress married to a controlling industry man who is coaching her for an upcoming appearance on David Letterman.
He tells her, “…appear the way Letterman appears, on Letterman. Laugh in a way that’s somehow deadpan. He’s making money ridiculing the exact things that have put him in a position to make money ridiculing things.”
The parody is fun and mean and thought provoking.
The title story is a crazy tale of sex, incest and drugs told through the point of view of a sexually sadistic and rich Young Republican attorney who hangs out with punk rockers on LSD. Even more crazy is that it is narrated in a stilted, descriptive, matter-of-fact and distant tone.
“Keith Jarrett is a Negro who plays the piano. I very much enjoy seeing Negros perform in all areas of performing arts.”
The final "short" is not short, and by page count is the longest in the book. Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way is a novella about a reunion for anyone who ever appeared in a McDonald’s commercial.
Some of the stories felt overwhelmingly intellectual and almost pathologically indulgent. Most of the time I was able to let go of the feelings of my own unworthiness and enjoy what truly felt like reading a new language.
Here come the adjectives—unsettling, remarkable, absurd, twisted, vibrant, arrogant, entertaining, inspiring; there are a lot more, but you get the idea.
Girl with Curious Hair is weight lifting for both sides of the brain.
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