Girl with Curious Hair is a collection of short stories by David Foster Wallace

David Foster Wallace

David Foster Wallace was an American author of novels, essays, and short stories, and a professor at Pomona College in Claremont, California...

 first published in 1989. Though the stories are not related, many of them share the theme of society's fascination with celebrity

Celebrity

A celebrity, also referred to as a celeb in popular culture, is a person who has a prominent profile and commands a great degree of public fascination and influence in day-to-day media...

, some using real celebrities, including Alex Trebek

Alex Trebek

George Alexander "Alex" Trebek is a Canadian American game show host who has been the host of the game show Jeopardy! since 1984, and prior to that, he hosted game shows such as Pitfall and High Rollers. He has appeared in numerous television series, usually as himself...

, David Letterman

David Letterman

David Michael Letterman is an American television host and comedian. He hosts the late night television talk show, Late Show with David Letterman, broadcast on CBS. Letterman has been a fixture on late night television since the 1982 debut of Late Night with David Letterman on NBC...

 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

Brat Pack (literary)

The expression "literary Brat Pack" refers to the three young, East-coast American authors, Bret Easton Ellis, Tama Janowitz and Jay McInerney, who emerged in USA in the 1980s...

" writers such as Bret Easton Ellis

Bret Easton Ellis

Bret Easton Ellis is an American novelist and short story writer. His works have been translated into 27 different languages. He was regarded as one of the so-called literary Brat Pack, which also included Tama Janowitz and Jay McInerney...

, as well as postmodern literary criticism

Literary criticism

Literary criticism is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often informed by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of its methods and goals...

 and metafiction

Metafiction

Metafiction, also known as Romantic irony in the context of Romantic works of literature, is a type of fiction that self-consciously addresses the devices of fiction, exposing the fictional illusion...

. A novella, "Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way", draws heavily on John Barth

John Barth

John Simmons Barth is an American novelist and short-story writer, known for the postmodernist and metafictive quality of his work.-Life:...

's metafictional short story "Lost in the Funhouse

Lost in the Funhouse

Lost in the Funhouse is a collection of loosely connected short stories that was originally published by John Barth in 1968. These postmodern stories examine the art of fiction writing, among other things, and seem to undermine the conventional and predictable nature of fiction...

".

List of Stories

Little Expressionless Animals

Luckily the Account Representative Knew CPR

Girl with Curious Hair

Lyndon

John Billy

Here and There

My Appearance

Say Never

Everything Is Green

Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way