The Interrogative Mood: A Novel?

By Padgett Powell

“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 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 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.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Sep 29, 2009
• ISBN: 9780061959622

Padgett Powell

Padgett Powell is the author of six novels, including Edisto, which was nominated for the National Book Award, and two collections of stories. His writing has appeared in the New Yorker, Harper's, and the Paris Review, as well as in The Best American Short Stories and The Best American Sports Writing. He has received a Whiting Writers' Award, the Rome Fellowship in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. He lives in Gainesville, Florida, where he teaches at MFA@FLA, the writing program of the University of Florida.

Reviews for The Interrogative Mood

[h_d_3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The way I felt about this book as I read it really depended on what mood I was in. When in a good mood, I thought this was very funny, entertaining and rather clever. I loved the way that after reading it for twenty pages, I realised that yes, of course it's a novel, a novel all about meeeeee! Until you ask someone a question and it becomes about them. Powell has effectively written a book about all the people who will have the stamina to go through with this thing, and that's a little clever.

Now, in a bad mood, I wanted to take this book and staple it to the arses of my enemies. It's a book composed completely of questions, so they feel relentless and exhausting. Most of them are fine, but then suddenly there's a question your eyes have already spotted and your brain is already answering while you're going 'no no no, not answering this, dammit, I just did!'. I felt like someone was sitting in the palm of my hands, constantly prying and pushing and forcing me to learn way too much about the way I think.

It was a simultaneously annoying and brilliant experience. Three or four stars [thinks] yeah, four.

[jerhogan · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Playful, Funny and at times interesting. At first it seems to be purely a gimmick (a novel that's all questions!). Definitely worth a read and I'll be checking out his other books.

[bragan_8 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Well, I can answer the question in the subtitle: No. This is not a novel. I'm not sure what the hell this is, other than that it's an endless series of questions. Mundane questions. Bizarre questions. Philosophical questions. Personal questions. Random questions. Repetitive questions. Thought-provoking questions. Nonsense questions. Trivia questions. Questions that give odd, incomplete little glances into the asker's mind. Question after question, on and on and on, with no obvious rhyme or reason to any of it. It's a stupid idea for a book. It should be almost unreadable. And yet, it's weirdly compelling. I mean, really, really compelling. Something about it just captured my attention and dragged me along with half-formed answers tumbling over themselves in my mind in a breathless internal dialog: "Yes. No. Yes, but it was years ago. Somewhere in-between. Does that even mean anything? I dunno, I'm more of a cat person than a dog person. Why are you so interested in furniture polish? Eww, no! Hey, that's a really good question; I think you're on to something worth pondering here. You already asked me that before. Maybe. Wait-- what?" This goes on for 164 pages. Admittedly, they're small pages. But by the end of it I felt tired, and rather like my brain had just been mugged. I'm still not sure quite what happened, but it was certainly one of the most interesting reading experiences I've ever had.

[blackjacket_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Have you ever read a book composed entirely of questions? Would you consider reading such a book? If I told you that there is indeed such a book called The Interrogative Mood : a novel? by Padgett Powell and that is contains nothing but 164 pages of questions, would that further entice you to read it? What if I quoted the opening paragraph?“Are your emotions pure? Are your nerves adjustable? How do you stand in relation to the potato? Should it still be Constantinople? Does a nameless horse make you more nervous or less nervous than a named horse? In your view, do children smell good? If before you know, would you eat animal crackers? Could you lie down and take a rest on the sidewalk? Did you love your mother and father, and do Psalms do it for you? If you are relegated to last place in every category, are you bothered enough to struggle up? Does your doorbell ever ring? Is there sand in your craw? Could Mendeleyev place you correctly in a square on a chart of periodic identities, or would you resonate all over the board? How many push-ups can you do?” (p.1)Still not convinced that this is a book worth your time? What if said that, given most good literature is mostly about an author asking questions of his or her reader, then a book full of questions for the reader to ponder is surely this uncontroversial idea taken to its logical extreme?If I employ nothing questions to review a book that is nothing but questions, is that tribute, plagiarism or just annoying? Am I doing the author a disservice? Are you now convinced to read The Interrogative Mood? Can I quote another passage; one that I feel better shows the surprising depth of the book?“Do you like to listen to weather broadcasts or do you just like to see, in uncoached anticipation, weather happen? Will you be saddened that you life has been minor if in fact it has been minor? Is there anything you might do today that would distinguish you from being just a vessel of consumption and pollution with a proper presence in the herd? Have you ever spent time in the house of a recently deceased old woman and seen her Siamese-cat needlepoints and her baking supplies and her shoes and her inspirational sayings on the wall? Do you realize that people move on steadily, even arguably bravely, unto the end, stunned and more stunned, and numbed and more numbed, by what has happened to them and not happened to them? Have you ever heard the saying, Life is a sandwich of activity between two periods of bed-wetting” (p. 28)Does a book composed of questions, and nothing but questions, end up saying more about the author or the reader? Wouldn’t you like to find out?

[beej415 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This book consists entirely of questions. I think Powell actually intended it to be a novel. However, it seems gimmicky at best and pretentious at worst. There are some very well written questions. In turns it can be amusing and piercing. But the one main flaw is Powell takes himself too seriously. I'd recommend this for a party. Open to any page and ask the group a question.

[alexrichman_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A bizarre book that's formed completely from questions. Most reviews comment on how touching some of the more existential enquiries are, but I was struck instead by the book's off-the-wall humour, full of non-sequiters (well, the whole thing's basically one after another), that reminded me a lot of the videogame Portal. I loved reading this, with the author deftly pulling of the trick of seeming original rather than reliant on a gimmick.

[jeffsdfw_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Is this my review? Could I have written a better one? Are you going to read the book? Do you think I can keep doing this and get away with it? Did Mckensie Phillips really bump uglies with her dirty ass father? Should you get this book and see why my reivew is written this way? I think I would go and found out, what do you think?