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zoewells's review
1.0
right up until the last story this was 3 stars but that was the biggest crock of shit I've read in the last 6 months so it ruined the rest of the book
erika_reads_things's review against another edition
1.0
It is really rare that I stop reading a book without finishing it. This is definitely an exception. I swear I tried. I even skipped to some of the stories that the reviewers were most excited about, but I just couldn't get into it.
explodinghead's review
3.0
Like most books of short stories, David Foster Wallace's GIRL WITH CURIOUS HAIR is a grab-bag of sorts. Some of the stories are not very interesting (about half), and some are pretty great. Particularly, "My Appearance" is a nice summation of Wallace's irony-as-false, irony-as-destructive philosophy. GIRL WITH CURIOUS HAIR really shines with its ending story, a novella titled "Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way". The novella is a playful piece of metafiction that serves as a impassioned critique of metafiction, and it is alone worth the price of admission here.
Of all of the stories, I'd say the above two mentioned stories are crucial to the DFW canon.
Of all of the stories, I'd say the above two mentioned stories are crucial to the DFW canon.
daniy's review
3.0
I was confused for most of them
reallyyyyyyyyyy hated the last one which is like half the book
reallyyyyyyyyyy hated the last one which is like half the book
wordmaster's review against another edition
4.0
'Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way' is gorgeous, and genius. It left me reeling, rapturous, awed not by the man writing (DFW sure did repeat himself an awful lot, didn't he? Midwestern horizons and thunderstorms and heads that get in the way and tennis tennis tennis) but awed by his craft, awed by the potency of the effect a particularly skillful arrangement of words has on me, and how thrilling it is to be swept away by words and how cerebral to be reminded of those very same words' inability to do what they just seemed to do. It's art, dagnabit, and it moved me.
5 stars.
There are other stories in here, too.
5 stars.
There are other stories in here, too.
theweirdjosh's review
2.0
The story "My Apperance" was staggeringly good. Everything else was bad to just okay, with "John Billy" and "Westward..." being the high points. The stories here mostly read as the kind of clever-for-its-own-sake, yet emotionally empty fiction DFW spent much of his career (and this very book) criticising. Still, it was interesting to see many of his preoccupations in their early stages.
gregzimmerman's review against another edition
3.0
Not DFW's best, but plenty to like here, still...