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The Interrogative Mood: a Novel? (2009)

There was one novel his agent couldn't sell and two manuscripts she wouldn't even show to people. One of these manuscripts was the series of questions, more questions and nothing but questions that became The Interrogative Mood. He'd begun it in reply to a colleague who sent emails composed themselves entirely of questions. Powell says he knew it was "fun", because he would feel "chipper" after working on it, but it didn't occur to him that he could do anything with it.

"One day I realised that I had 142 pages of it – it was long enough to be a book," he says. "While we were trying to sell a book that actually looked like a book I would periodically come across the manuscript and glance at it and say 'You know, I don't know what this is, but it's the best thing I have'."

Eventually his agent sent it to the Paris Review, where an editor called Matt Weiland fell in love with it and published an extract. As soon as Weiland moved back to book publishing at HarperCollins's Ecco imprint, he called back and asked if Powell's agent had sold the rest of the manuscript. "She laughed, said no," Weiland recalls. "I asked to consider it there formally, then hesitated, fearing my new colleagues would think I was insane – this, the very first book I raise?" Luckily his colleagues at Ecco loved it too, and The Interrogative Mood was published to rave reviews in 2009. Like You and I, Powell explains, any large-scale structure in The Interrogative Mood is "left to some sort of sub-conscious accretion".
-INTERVIEW: Padgett Powell: Leaving 'cuddly realism' behind: The American author who came 'back from the grave' with a novel composed entirely of questions, tells Richard Lea how he's written his way out of conventional storytelling (Richard Lea, 18 Jan 2012, The Guardian)

It is probably fitting that the reader’s response to a book (novel?) made up entirely of questions (maybe 2500 of them?) is not to offer answers but, instead, to interrogate it and its author. In the first instance, the title itself includes a question mark after “Novel”, so we ask: “Is the person asking all these questions a fictional character or the author himself?”

I sort of assume it is the author asking. But, is he asking them in order to reveal himself, or would he be interested in a listener’s answers? Can anyone who unleashes such a deluge really be curious about all the responses? Or is this a framework for a fundamentally lonely person to try and generate a conversation?

While I find it nearly impossible to believe that anyone has ever actually read the book cover to cover - the interrogation is wearying - it is, nevertheless, a fascinating exercise. If nothing else - as someone who has spent an inordinate amount of time at taps and on barstools discussing innumerable imponderable questions - one would like to grab a beer with the author and quiz him in turn.

(Reviewed:09-Aug-26)

Grade: (B+)

Websites:

Are you much on games of chance, or cards? Is there anything sadder than the demise of the elephant, among all the sad occurrences in the modern world? Are you comforted by good tile? Would you like to have a modern house on a golf course—kitchen island, breakfast counter—and live a golf lifestyle with golfing friends? Do you like to pay bills? Do you still answer the phone? Are you fond of country wisdom such as “All the snow in the world won’t change the color of the pine needles”? If you were a bird, would you like to soar or flap more? Can you shoot well? Have you ever had, or do you have now, a soldering kit? Do you have a grasp of pH?

Are you happy? Are you given to wondering if others are happy? Do you know the distinctions, empirical or theoretical, between moss and lichen? Have you seen an animal lighter on its feet than the sporty red fox? Do you cut slack for the crime of passion as opposed to its premeditated cousin? Do you understand why the legal system would? Are you bothered by socks not matching up in subtler respects than color? Is it clear to you what I mean by that? Is it clear to you why I am asking you all these questions? Is it, in general, would you say, very clear, or very unclear, or are you somewhere in between in the murky sea of prescience? Should I say murky sea of presence of mind? Should I go away? Leave you alone? Have you grown accustomed to the annoyance, if it were, and come to be fond of it, as must be an oyster of its pearl? Is your pique with me now a perdurable and almost round and intriguing laminate thing you are not unhappy to have found in yourself? Can you ride a bicycle very well? Was learning to ride one for you as a child easy or not? Have you had the pleasure of teaching a child to ride a bicycle? Are your emotions rich and various and warm, or are they small and pinched and cheap like spit? Do you trust even yourself? Isn’t it—forgive me this pop locution—hard being you? If you could trade out and be, say, Godzilla, wouldn’t you jump on it, dear? Couldn’t you then forego your bad haircuts and dour wardrobe and moping ways and begin to have some fun, as Godzilla? What might we have to give you to induce you to become Godzilla and leave us alone? Shall we await your answer?

    -EXCERPT: Extract: The Imperative Mood by Padgett Powell: Listen up! Padgett Powell turns from questioner to commander in this exclusive extract from his short story, The Imperative Mood (Padgett Powell, 24 May 2012, The Guardian)
    -ESSAY: The Lunacy of Gumbo (Padgett Powell, 10/30/16, Kitchn)
    -EXCERPT: Edisto (Padgett Powell, November 7, 1983, The New Yorker)
    -STORY: Yeltsin Spotted Abroad in a Bar (Padgett Powell, Summer 2015, Paris Review)
    -STORY: Horses (Padgett Powell, Winter 2004, Paris Review)
    -STORY: Aliens of Affection (Padgett Powell, Summer 1997, Paris Review)
    -STORY: Mr. Irony, Mr. Irony Renounces Irony (Padgett Powell, Summer 1990, Paris Review)
    -STORY: The Winnowing of Mrs. Schuping (Padgett Powell, December 31, 1990, The New Yorker)
    -STORY: DIZZY (Padgett Powell, Unsaid)
    -STORY: Wayne in the Desert (Padgett Powell, Mississippi Review)
    -ESSAY: Tangled Up in Indigo: Since first encountering an indigo snake as a boy, the author has been haunted by this all-but-extinct vestige of the Southern wild, once as much a part of the landscape as the longleaf pine. For fifty years he has walked the woods in search of an indigo, with an eye to the ground and, at long last, a little help from perhaps the only group in the world trying to save them (Padgett Powell, April/May 2015, Garden & Gun)
    -ESSAY: Bermuda: Paradise Proper: On an island of civility: spacious shorts, good roux, and a close encounter with Darth Vader (Padgett Powell, June/July 2012, Garden & Gun)
    -STORY: A Sausage Run with the Band (Padgett Powell, June 02, 2013, Oxford American)
    -STORY: The Cork (Padgett Powell, 9/09/15, Oxford American)
    -ESSAY: Diary: Padgett Powell, Eff the Classics (Part One) (Padgett Powell, May 21, 2021, BookPost)
    -ESSAY: Diary: Padgett Powell, Eff the Classics (Part Two) (Padgett Powell, May 23, 2021, BookPost)
    -ESSAY: Review: Padgett Powell on Charles Willeford, Known Pulpist (Padgett Powell, Jan 03, 2021, Book Post)
    -STORIES: Three Short Pieces (Padgett Powell, Winter 2006, Narrative)
    -STORIES: Two by Padgett Powell (Electric Lit, 6/01/15)
    -REVIEW: Padgett Powell on “Wildcat,” a film about Flannery O'Connor: Can a movie convey the essence and the quintessence of what the author tried to do and who she was? Padgett Powell, Jun 11, 2025, Book Post)
    -REVIEW: Review: Padgett Powell on William Trevor (Padgett Powell, May 25, 2018, BookPost)
    -LECTURE: Preview of Unsaid Six: Craft Talk without Craft, by Padgett Powell (Padgett Powell, MFA Creative Writing Program of Columbia University in September, 2010. )
    -STORY: “A Gentleman’s C” (Padgett Powell, November 26, 2010, Biblioklept)
    -ESSAY: Padgett Powell on Peter Taylor (Padgett Powell, Dec 04, 2018, BookPost)
    -REVIEW: The Poetry of Fact: On Alec Wilkinson’s Moonshine (Padgett Powell, May 16, 2024, Paris Review)
    -ESSAY: Padgett Powell: What Writing Should Do (Aerogramme Studio)
    -EXCERPT: from Mrs. Hollingworth’s Lis (Padgett Powell, Spring 2000, Conjunctions:34).
    -REVIEW: Padgett Powell on Donald Barthelme (Padgett Powell, Oct 26, 2022, BookPost)
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    -PROFILE: The last old-school American genius (Alex Perez, November 12, 2021, Washington Examiner)
    -INTERVIEW: Padgett Powell: Leaving 'cuddly realism' behind: The American author who came 'back from the grave' with a novel composed entirely of questions, tells Richard Lea how he's written his way out of conventional storytelling (Richard Lea, 18 Jan 2012, The Guardian)
    -INTERVIEW: In Which Padgett Powell Employs an Extended Scatological Metaphor: Writing is Like Excreting, Or Listening to the Radio. Or Both. (Rebecca Evanhoe, 9/10/15, LitHub)
    -AUDIO INTERVIEW: Contemporary Writing in USA: Mr. Padgett Powell (1991-08-02 )
    -INTERVIEW: Writers on Writing: I Kept Writing Them: Michael Kimball Interviews Padgett Powell (Michael Kimball, 1/27/10, Faster Times)
    -INTERVIEW: An Interview with Padgett Powell (KEEPER OF THE SNAILS: The Literary Blog of Clare Dudman, 5/24/12)
    -INTERVIEW: Padgett Powell by V. Hunt: The renowned humorist discusses his second novel at Kate’s Fish Camp in Gainesville, FL. (V. Hunt, April 1, 1996, BOMB)
    -INTERVIEW: Author Padgett Powell Talks Trebuchets And Snake Sandwiches (Elliot Reed, December 28, 2016, WUFT)
    -INTERVIEW: The World According to Padgett Powell: The Florida author on championing snakes, noodling for catfish, and his first collection of nonfiction, Indigo (Lindsey Liles, March 1, 2022, Garden & Gun)
    -INTERVIEW: An Interview with Padgett Powell (Brian J. Barr, 9/01/06, Believer)
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    -PROFILE: Padgett Powell Is American Letters’ Oddest Elder Statesman (Aaron Calvin, October 5, 2015, Vice)
    -PROFILE: Southern Discomfort (Dan Halpern, Oct. 16, 2009, NY Times Magazine)
    -PROFILE: The perplexing obscurity of Padgett Powell: The Gainesville native has been lauded in England for his work, but never gained the same following at home (Carlos Cunha, Oct. 6, 2018, Gainesville Sun)

My greeter also could have been in a “Tarzan” movie. In his frayed, turned-up khaki shorts, open shirt, white stubble and mussed white hair, he could be playing the part of an explorer or hunter who has stayed in the heart of darkness a tad too long.

Mr. Powell, I presume?

Padgett Powell: Someone whose true explorations, whose Tarzanian exertions, whose biggest hunts have taken place in the thickets of American English, usually to edgily humorous effect. Not a great white hunter, then, but a great American writer, perhaps — to echo the old commercial for The New Yorker, which has published him — the greatest that many followers of the American literary scene have never heard of.

    -INTERVIEW: “I now lack the juice to fuel the bluster to conceal that I am a simpleton.” Padgett Powell, Legend: Jean Marc Ah-Sen Talks to the Author of “Edisto” (Jean Marc Ah-Sen, January 30, 2024, LitHub)
    -PODCAST: Questions of science and literature: Finally we take Padgett Powell's novel in questions, The Interrogative Mood: A Novel?, out on to the streets of London. Can you really make a novel out of only questions? How does it feel when a book puts the reader under the microscope? Can a selection of passers-by give us the answers? (Presented by Claire Armitstead, 26 Nov 2010, Guardian Books Podcast)
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    -ESSAY: Padgett Powell (Bill Evans, Feb 2, 2022, Medium)
    -INTERVIEW: The Interrogative Mood: Questions with John Wakefield (Hong Kong Baptist University)
    -INTERVIEW: Padgett Powell, author of You & I - interview: The writer is following up his postmodern 'questions' novel, The Interrogative Mood, with a book-length dialogue (The List, 29 March 2022)
    -INTERVIEW: Interview with Padgett Powell (Rebecca Boyd and Padgett Powell, Mississippi Review, Spring - Summer 1999)
    -INTERVIEW: Padgett Powell (Royal Young, July 30, 2012, Interview)
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    -ESSAY: A Brief History of Padgett Powell in American Literature (Kibin)
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    -STUDY GUIDE: Padgett Powell (eNotes)
    -STUDY GUIDE: Short stories by Padgett Powell (Writing Atlas)
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    -REVIEW: of The Interrogative Mood: A Novel? by Padgett Powell: This book poses question after question – mad, peculiar, and often very thought-provoking. Unlikely though it sounds, it's a work of real charm (Troy Jollimore, 6 Nov 2010, The Guardian)

The Interrogative Mood is both an impressive literary comeback and a work of real bravado and charm. The book is not a novel but it manages to do something that many novels try to do: it offers a detailed, fascinating character study by exploring the textures of a highly individual and idiosyncratic sensibility. What sort of person, after all, would ask a question such as: "Do you like a smooth pond or a ripple upon a pond?" and then follow it up with "If you were to participate in a spice war, what spice would you fight for?"? There is, as these questions accumulate, a kind of melancholy, an obsessive nostalgia that is, in a way that is hard to put one's finger on, deeply moving.

    -REVIEW: Funny You Should Ask (Josh Emmons, Oct. 22, 2009, NY Times Book Review)
    -REVIEW: of The Interrogative Mood (Kirkus)
    -REVIEW: A Novel? Padgett Powell's Book Defies Genre (Lynn Neary, 12/31/09, NPR: All Things Considered)

We can deduce, by some of the questions he asks, that the book's narrator, or perhaps its interrogator, is a man of someone of a certain age: "Do you miss Tab and do you fully understand its disappearance?" he asks.

He's nostalgic about the past, or at least about a soda that has long since peaked in popularity. What else can we deduce? One guesses he's not entirely pleased with the way things are in the present. Some of his questions are not meant to be discussed in polite company. He has a wicked sense of humor. But this funny guy of a certain age also seems to be contemplating his own mortality: "Do you want something said of you, or nothing said of you, when you go?"

    -REVIEW: of The Interrogative Mood (Jeff Parker, December 7, 2009, Rumpus)
    -REVIEW: Dude, c’est moi (Edmund Gordon, 2/03/11, London Review of Books)
    -REVIEW: of The Interrogative Mood: (Steven Poole asks: could a novel composed entirely of questions work? (Steven Poole, 12 Nov 2010, The Guardian)
    -REVIEW: of The Interrogative Mood (shigekuni.)
    -REVIEW: Ask Force: Padgett Powell pops the question again and again (Rick Moody, Fall 2009, Book Forum)
    -REVIEW: of The Interrogative Mood (fictionatelier)
    -REVIEW: The Selvedge of Innocence (Jenny Rowell, )
    -REVIEW: Inquisitive: Padgett Powell returns with a novel written entirely in questions (Sean Kinch, July 15, 2010, Chapter 16)
    -REVIEW: of
    -REVIEW: of
    -REVIEW: of
    -REVIEW: of
    -REVIEW: of
    -REVIEW: Wunderkammer: Padgett Powell’s Edisto (Megan Mayhew Bergman, 9/03/11, Kenyon Review)
    -REVIEW: of Edisto (Robert Towers, May 31, 1984, New York Review of Books)
    -REVIEW: of Edisto by Padgett Powell – review (Alfred Hickling, 6 Nov 2012, The Guardian)
    -REVIEW: of Edisto (StoryGraph)
    -REVIEW: of Edisto (Sybil Estess, Autumn 1984, Southwest Review)
    -REVIEW: of Edisto (The Bowed Bookshelf)
    -REVIEW: of
    -REVIEW: of
    -REVIEW: of
    -REVIEW: of EDISTO REVISITED by Padgett Powell: Carolina Slacker (Scott Spencer, 3/31/1996, NY Times Book Review)
    -REVIEW: of
    -REVIEW: of
    -REVIEW: of
    -REVIEW: of Trick or Treat by Padgett Powell (Rosemary M. Canfield Reisman, 2022, Ebsco)
    -REVIEW: of
    -REVIEW: of Typical by Padgett Powell (Bobsphere)
    -REVIEW: of Typical (Booksies Blog)
    -REVIEW: Dazzling Tales of Life’s Walking Wounded: TYPICAL, by Padgett Powell (CHRIS GOODRICH, July 30, 1991, LA Times)
    -REVIEW: Waiting for Padgett: a review of You & Me by Padgett Powell (William Giraldi, August 1, 2012, LA Review of Books)
    -REVIEW: That’s Life (Thomas Mallon, Aug. 3, 2012, NY Times Book Review)
    -REVIEW: of
    -REVIEW: of
    -REVIEW: of
    -REVIEW: of Padgett Powell’s ‘Cries for Help, Various’ (Teddy Wayne, Oct. 2, 2015, NY Times Book Review)
    -REVIEW: of Cries for Help, Various by Padgett Powell (David Byron Queen, September 8, 2015, Rumpus)
    -REVIEW: He’s not laughing at you, he’s crying with you: "Cries for Help" unfolds as a series of insane sprints across the dark side of the imagination. (Agatha French, November 30, 2015, LA Review of Books)
    -REVIEW: of Cries for Help (Shelfawareness)
    -REVIEW: 'There's no explaining' the absurdist universe of Padgett Powell's stories: 'We Are Not in the Zone of Logic' (Sean Kinch, Oct 8, 2015, Nashville Scene)
    -REVIEW: In the Face of Absurdity, Macro & Micro: ‘Cries for Help, Various’ by Padgett Powell (Sam Shuler, zyzzyva)
    -REVIEW: of Cries for Help, Various – Padgett Powell (Miriam W. Karraker, Full-Stop)
    -REVIEW: of
    -REVIEW: of
    -REVIEW: Making Sense: Jordan Blumetti reflects on "Indigo," the latest book from one of the South’s greatest living writers, Padgett Powell. (Jordan Blumetti, Feb 18, 2022, Salvation South)
    -REVIEW: of Indigo: Padgett Powell Goes Snake Chasing (Christian Lorentzen, Nov. 6, 2021, NY Times Book Review)
    -REVIEW: Smashed-up Realism A collection of essays from novelist Padgett Powell displays much of what makes his voice unique. (Glen Sharp, 6/17/22, City Journal)
    -REVIEW: Padgett Powell conveys ‘whimsical profundity’ in essay collection, ‘Indigo’: Wide ranging topics run the gamut from endangered snakes to Bermuda shorts. (Jeff Calder, Nov 29, 2021, AJC)
    -REVIEW: of Indigo: Arm Wrestling, Snake Saving, and Some Things in Between, essays by Padgett Powell (Wayne Catan, on the Seawall)
    -REVIEW: of
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The Interrogative Mood: a Novel? (2009)

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