In the collection of stories, Girl With Curious Hair, David Foster Wallace frequently returns to ideas about poetry—in literature and life. His characters compare obvious images to subtle meanings, the signifiers to the signified and the truth of an experience to the poetry of an emotion. Through their dialogue, Wallace encourages the reader to question the value and clarity of poetry.
Poems, Communication and Confusion
The character Faye, in "Expressionless Little Animals," dismisses poetry as an obtuse language: “I've just never liked it. It beats around bushes. Even when I like it, it's nothing more than a really oblique way of saying the obvious." Her girlfriend, Julie, replies, "But consider how very, very few of us have the equipment to deal with the obvious” (13). Faye suggests that poetry serves no real purpose, but Julie claims it gives us a way to deal with reality. The two of them fail to reach an understanding through words.
Julie later expands on her understanding of poetry, and explains that poems enhance the obvious:
“You asked me once how poems informed me.... Remember the ocean? Our dawn ocean, that we loved? We loved it because it was like us, Faye. That ocean was obvious.… “It was obvious and a poem, because it was us. See things like that, Faye. Your own face, moving into expression. A wave, breaking on a rock, giving up its shape in a gesture that expresses shape” (41-42).
Julie suggests that the ocean was poetry, because it represented them. Julie compares waves to facial expressions, mentioning gestures that express shape, just as words express meaning in poetry. Faye, however, misses Julie’s point. She says: “You don’t like my face at rest?” Faye is concerned with the problems of her real, emotional life; she is afraid Julie does not like her. Poetry does not soothe these concerns for Faye—rather, she becomes hurt due to her misunderstanding. For Julie, poetry deepens life; for Faye, poetry is confusing.
Technology, Poetry and Emotion
In the story, “Here and There,” another couple argues about the significance and value of poetry, and ends up with unclear results. The boy believes that “words as fulfillers of the function of signification in artistic communication will wither like the rules of form before them. Meaning will be clean” (155). He claims: “Poetry, like everything organized and understood under the rubric of Life, is dynamic. The superfluous always exists simply to have its ass kicked” (155). He attempts, as a “poet of technology” to break the world down into simple signifiers, to kill the metaphors and qualities within poetry. Ironically, he expresses his anti-poetry theory quite poetically.
Still, by missing the significance of poetry and the subtlety of emotion, the boy loses the girl. Again, ironically, he becomes engaged emotionally after he loses her. He kisses her picture, he thinks about her constantly. The story ends with his acknowledgment of fear: he is “afraid of absolutely everything there is” (172). A poetic ending, indeed, but it does not affirm a reader’s belief in the value of words. The story consists of a complex argument that provides no apparent conclusion except that two people misunderstand each other, as was the case with Faye and Julie. What, then, is the point of words?
Versatile Storytelling
Wallace is writing stories, though, so it seems that he must believe poetry serves some purpose. He is obsessed with the theme of writing itself, with the idea of poetry as a portrayal of truth. He also examines the value of poetry by attempting to blend words into his narrator’s reality, using their creative and unusual language.
The story “John Billy” begins: “Was me suppose to tell Simple Ranger how Chuck Nunn Junior done wronged the man that wronged him and fleen to parts unguessed” (121). The narrator continues with this unusual style to present a certain vision of a world. “Girl With Curious Hair” also has a playful voice—a lawyer punk-rocker with a quirky tone. Wallace shows his incredibly versatile storytelling ability through these various expressions, and makes a bold attempt to blend words into life, to blend poetry and a person’s mind. These stories sometimes have a strong impact, but other times fail to pull the reader in, as poetry does if it fails to strike an honest chord.
Writing: An Impossible Task
Perhaps Wallace wants to believe in poetry, but finds, like Faye and the boy in “Here and There,” it can be deeply dissatisfying. In the story, “Westward the Course of Empire Takes It’s Way,” a character in a creative writing workshop says: “Basically what you’re doing when you’re writing fiction is telling a lie, he tells those of us in the seminar; and the psychology of reading dictates that we’re willing to buy only what coheres, on some gut level, with what we already believe” (360). Wallace is not necessarily declaring that this is a true statement, of course, but it does seem that in his writing he hopes to bring poetry as close to the truth as possible.
Yet, because the writing of fiction is a lie in itself, Wallace is attempting an impossible pursuit. Words will never stand in for meaning completely. One of Wallace’s characters says: “To them right and wrong is words, boy…. Right and wrong ain’t words…They’re feelings. In your guts and intestines and such” (107). It is those feelings in the intestines, that truth, which Wallace strives for.
Girl With Curious Hair, David Foster Wallace. (W. W. Norton & Company, 1997, ISBN: 978-0393313963)
Clarissa Caldwell - Clarissa Caldwell lives, reads and writes in Walla Walla, Washington. She has a BA in Comparative Literature from the University of ...
