Synopses & Reviews
Are you happy? Do we need galoshes? Are bluebirds perfect? Do you know the distinctions, empirical or theoretical, between moss and lichen? Is it clear to you why I am asking you all these questions? Should I go away? Leave you alone? Should I bother but myself with the interrogative mood?
The acclaimed writer Padgett Powell is fascinated by what it feels like to walk through everyday life, to hear the swing and snap of American talk, to be both electrified and overwhelmed by the mad cacophony — the muchness — of America. The Interrogative Mood is Powell's playful and profound response, a bebop solo of a book in which every sentence is a question.
Perhaps only Powell — a writer who was once touted as the best of his generation by Saul Bellow and among the top five writers of fiction in the country by Barry Hannah — could pull off such a remarkable stylistic feat. Is it a novel? Whatever it is, The Interrogative Mood is one of the most audacious literary high-wire acts since Nicholson Baker's The Mezzanine. Powell's unnamed narrator forces us to consider our core beliefs, our most cherished memories, our views on life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In fiction as in life, there may be no easy answers — but The Interrogative Mood is an exuberant book that leaves the reader feeling a little more alive.
Review
"A delightful stylistic flight, and as engrossing as staying up late at summer camp considering every goofy or brilliant question that comes into your head. Padgett Powell is one of the best writers in America, and one of the funniest, too." Village Voice
Review
"[A] peculiar and mind-popping experience.... Most novels take us away from ourselves, into the lives and minds of other people. The Interrogative Moodgoes boldly in the other direction and really, wouldn't you like to talk about yourself?" Amy Hempel
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"Hypnotic...Jazzy meditations that wrestle with life's important questions." St. Petersburg Times
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"Can you picture the rabble-rousing literary offspring of Flannery O'Connor and Donald Barthelme? Does the prospect of reading a lawlessly lyrical, comic novel composed entirely in The Interrogative Mood pique your curiosity?" Luc Sante
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"This book will sear the unlucky volumes shelved on either side of it. How it doesn't, itself, combust in flames is a mystery to me. Padgett Powell has given us a wake-up call." Ian Frazier
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"A remarkable collection of philosophical inquiries, stimulating either/ors and good-faith measures the gap between where we are as a species and where we belong. The Interrogative Mooddemands to be read deliberately, for it is courageous and entertaining and interested in the essential mysteries of self and society." New Yorker
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"[An] ingenious provocation, devious and deeply hilarious riff, perfect party game, not to mention the most entertaining personality test ever devised. But above all it is another brilliant work of fiction, in some ways Powell's best, by one of the few truly important American writers of our time." Kirkus Reviews
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"You don't so much read [The Interrogative Mood] as let it shove and jangle you into unexpected and highly pleasurable states of mind. Powell is a master of nouveau Southern lyricism....How this book works is beyond me, but, miraculously, it does." New York Times Magazine
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"A supreme literary stunt." Rick Moody
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"[This novel] represents superior value in a crumbling economy. Its pages do not tell a story they tell thousands of stories, all of them starring you. Powell pokes and prods, soothes and slaps you. By the end you will feel as rich as Haroun al-Rashid on the thousandth night." Sam Lipsyte, author of Home Land
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“A supreme literary stunt.” Jonathan Lethem
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“Captivating and often glorious.” New York Times Book Review, Paperback Row
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“[Powell] has a rare ear for dialect and dialogue, a dedication to new ways of making words jump and dance and catch fire.” New York Times Magazine
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“Intimate and hilariousthe yearning is as powerful as all that is evoked and revealed in this precise and beautiful novel.” Amy Hempel
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“The book intrigues as it entertains… [Powells] questions and nonsequiturs will have you looking at your own life with a renewed sense of observationand a healthy appetite for the absurd.” (5 stars) Time Out New York
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“Offhanded, witty, original, and [an] altogether unique book. . . . Here, hes less a writer in the school of John Casey or Peter Taylor than he is a member of the badass gang of Barry Hannah. The Interrogative Mood, serious and laughable, extends this legacy.” Rick Moody
Review
“If Duchamp or maybe Magritte wrote a novel (and maybe they did. Did they?) it might look something like this remarkable little book of Padgett Powells: immensely readable, ingenious, witty, and ultimately important-feeling in a way you cant quite describe but dont need to.” Richard Ford
Synopsis
If Duchamp or maybe Magritte wrote a novel (and maybe they did. Did they?) it might look something like this remarkable little book of Padgett Powell s. Richard FordThe Interrogative Mood is a wildly inventive, jazzy meditation on life and language by the novelist that Ian Frazier hails as one of the best writers in America, and one of the funniest, too. A novel composed entirely of questions, it is perhaps the most audacious literary high-wire act since Nicholson Baker s The Mezzanine or David Foster Wallace s stories; a playful and profound book that, as Jonathan Safran Foer says, will sear the unlucky volumes shelved on either side of it. How it doesn t, itself, combust in flames is a mystery to me. "
Synopsis
Playful and profound, The Interrogative Mood is a bebop solo of a book in which every sentence is a question. In it acclaimed novelist Padgett Powell a writer once touted as the best of his generation by Saul Bellow force us to consider our core beliefs, our most cherished memories, our final views on life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In fiction as in life, there may be no easy answers but The Interrogative Mood is an exuberant book that leaves the reader feeling more alive.
Synopsis
“If Duchamp or maybe Magritte wrote a novel (and maybe they did. Did they?) it might look something like this remarkable little book of Padgett Powells.”
—Richard Ford
The Interrogative Mood is a wildly inventive, jazzy meditation on life and language by the novelist that Ian Frazier hails as “one of the best writers in America, and one of the funniest, too.” A novel composed entirely of questions, it is perhaps the most audacious literary high-wire act since Nicholson Bakers The Mezzanine or David Foster Wallaces stories; a playful and profound book that, as Jonathan Safran Foer says, “will sear the unlucky volumes shelved on either side of it. How it doesnt, itself, combust in flames is a mystery to me.”
About the Author
Padgett Powell is the author of five novels, including The Interrogative Mood and Edisto, which was nominated for the National Book Award. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Harpers, Little Star, and The Paris Review, and he has received a Whiting Writers Award and the Rome Fellowship in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in Gainesville, Florida, where he teaches writing at MFA@FLA, the writing program of the University of Florida.