The Interrogative Mood by Padgett Powell

Author:Padgett Powell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2009-09-27T04:00:00+00:00

HOW MUCH TIME HAVE you spent in a deer stand? Are you attracted to sausage (and to the idea of sausage), or are you repulsed by it, or are you sausage neutral? Will you get on a bus in a foreign city in which you do not speak the language? Do you wear slippers? A robe? Doesn’t it seem as if fabric printed in a red-and-white checkerboard generally has squares larger than the squares in fabric printed in a blue-and-white checkerboard? Would you rather see Estelle Faulkner hit William Faulkner in the face with a croquet mallet as he reads Time magazine or the episode of Amos ’n’ Andy in which one of them bites down on a roofing nail in a doughnut? Did you see the Tarzan movie in which natives bend two trees into an X and lash their enemies thereto and release the trees, tearing the enemies in half? Do you know your scat? Do you bowl? On a desert island, which strikes me as oxymoronic but the phrase enjoys, I believe, considerable currency, or maybe I confuse it with deserted island, which itself raises a question—namely, has the island once been populated and is only now that you are on it otherwise unpopulated—let us say then on an island all by your own self with nothing to read except one kind of poetry, would you select metaphysical, lyric, language, gift-card, or cowboy poetry?

Would you like to go on a safari, walking or riding elephants with a full bush camp carried along by porters and—does it ever occur to you that the good things in life have all been done already and all that is left is crappy new things or theatrical reenactments of the good old things? What about just wearing a blatantly stupid but somehow comforting or comfortable poplin bush jacket with epaulets in the privacy of your own home? Can you provide any help as I try to recall who it was and where I witnessed a man, I believe a somewhat socially out-of-it single man, in a suburban house, who was digging in his backyard a well by driving PVC pipe into the ground by hand? Have you ever heard of putting Mercurochrome on bait fish, as in “Put some macurreecomb on ’im”? If you own a crowbar, do you sometimes like to just pick it up and get the heft of it, admire the heavy hex shaft and the claw and the wedge? What color is your crowbar?

Do you bank in Switzerland or know anyone who does? Do you know anyone with a really good figure? Have you ever drunk mineral oil? Have you ever had a passion for airplanes? Would you be likely to use the phrase “inherent risk” or would just “risk” do for you? How many people have you known called Bobby? Have you played tiddledywinks? Do you like dogs? Can you sing? Are you smart? Do you like terror? Is fire a good thing or a bad thing?

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