SOURCE: "At Play in the Funhouse of Fiction," in Washington Post Book World, Vol. 19, No. 32, August 6, 1989, p. 4.

In the following review of Girl with Curious Hair, novelist Bell places Wallace in the context of "metafictionists" like John Barth and Thomas Pynchon in order to discuss how Wallace seeks to differentiate himself from that label.

The appearance of his immensely long first novel, The Broom of the System, caused David Foster Wallace to be lumped in with "metafictionists" such as Barth, Coover, Pynchon & Co. Evidently Wallace is not altogether pleased with this categorization, and in his new and also sizeable first collection of stories he takes some pains to correct it. The volume ends with what by virtue of its length might be called a novella, "Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way," which is simultaneously a parody of, homage to, and rebellion against John Barth's story, "Lost...