Padgett Powell - The Interrogative Mood

Does any part of your character remind you of that of Fred Rogers, the children’s TV-show host? Do you sometimes wish to sit quiet and alone and without a thing to do but sit there, or does this strike you as insupportably idle? Have you ever tried to pole-vault? What sort of height do you think you could achieve pole-vaulting? Can you walk on stilts? If you were offered the option of trying to walk around on those thirty-foot stilts you see in the circus in lieu of trying to pole-vault, which one would you prefer to try? What circumstances would be required before you would attempt to garrote someone with a piano wire? Have you ever eaten a candy flower of the sort used to decorate commercial cakes? Would you like to have a Lamborghini? Was your father a bastard outright, a medium bastard, or a light bastard? Was your mother a saint? Are you annoyed, or amused, by the playfulness of the preceding questions? Are you surprised at the absence of the whole-earth niche in the condom market — a biodegradable condom, say, or one made of organic materials, if not of something stone-ground then at least of something like Gore-Tex?

Is it legally possible nowadays to be burned up on a funeral pyre? Do you ever squeeze your own orange juice? Have you been in the presence of an accidental discharge of a firearm? Do you prefer diarrhea to constipation, or vice versa, if you have to suffer either affliction? How many generations back can you name your relatives? Do you remember seeing lion tamers wielding a whip and a chair — doesn’t a chair seem an odd thing to have in a cage full of giant cats to begin with, let alone to use as a prop or standard instrument of defense? Have you ever heard it said of someone who drinks a lot but never gets drunk that he has a hollow leg? Would you like, right now, some pancakes with real maple syrup on them? Would you like to send a love letter to anyone? Have you ever mounted insects on a board with pins through their thoraxes? What aspect or adventure of your life strikes you now as having been the biggest waste of your time or energy or resources?

Would you rather receive as a gift a boomerang or a dead-bolt lock set? Have you ever in the first few minutes naked with a new sexual partner felt or thought you felt a vestigial tail? If you have felt a vestigial tail on a new sexual partner, or thought you felt a vestigial tail, was this an agreeable or a disagreeable moment? If you are asked to name the best rock ’n’ roll band of all time, do you name it, say it depends, or say you don’t know? If you were told you would spend the day in the field hoeing and were offered a short hoe or a long hoe, which would you take? Do you know the name of the condition that protrudes the eyeballs? Have you ever taken a girl to batting cages and there had her foul a ball into her own lip and had to buy her ice cream to stop her from crying? Have you ever lost a shoe and thrown away the second shoe and then found the first shoe? Have you ever known anyone proficient on a unicycle who struck you as a normal person — whose character, apart from the unicycling, did not strike you as deficient somehow or otherwise suspicious? Did you play marbles as a child? Is there a country or culture on earth that strikes you as better than all, or most, others? What to your mind is the most heinous crime? If you could, would you elect to have had more or better education than you received, and would you elect to have been brighter than you were?

Do you realize that when I asked you about what I called a “bifurcated tunnel,” one side under the sign HOPE and the other NO HOPE, I was describing what I have since learned is called a gauntlet, this splitting of the route, but now that I think about it I see we do not really want either bifurcated tunnel or gauntlet because in my mind one is not yet in a tunnel that splits, one is merely approaching two tunnels so close together that they share a common entry wall, and what I want to know is this: if you found yourself on the left, which is where I envision the Hope tunnel, being swept by the heavy crowd into the Hope tunnel if you go with the flow, would you resist this default entry into Hope and maneuver over to the right to get into the No Hope tunnel, which you can see has a lot fewer people going into it, and which maneuver you think you can effect by some swim moves and other labors? If one of three planes was destined to crash, killing either the entire football team, the entire marching band, or the entire cheerleading squad, and you had to decide which plane crashed, which plane would you select? Are you very much into spelunking? What is meant by tartan?

Are you aware that there are accounts of dogs — rat terriers one might presume, or dogs that became the foundation for the breed — that have killed more than a thousand rats in a pit in an hour? Have you witnessed the sport called punkin chunkin? Do you know what is meant by defibrillation? Do you know if those large chrome-rimmed gill-like holes on the sides of I believe late-fifties Buicks were functional or merely stylistic? Did you scream when Vincent Price instructed you to in The Tingler ? If you could have anyone on earth come over to your place for some sexual relations right now, or in an hour or two if you wanted to get ready, or even later tonight or tomorrow night or next week if you wanted major preparations, or, hell, like in six months or a year if you perhaps have some weight to lose, who would it be? Will you shoot a game animal and will you shoot a person? Are you weaker in trigonometry, algebra, or calculus? Are you a little bothered, as I am, that you don’t know the classic patterns of plaid? Would you rather have written “What rough beast, its hour come round at last, / Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?” or “It comes with the territory” or “Like, whatever”?

Have you ever been bitten by a cat? Do you know the mechanism of a calliope? Have you ever purchased a rubber from a machine, and do you know when that term (“rubber”) disappeared, and if you could, would you replace the term “condom” with it? In swing dancing, there is two-step and three-step, but isn’t there also one-step? Have you ever drunk from pastel-colored aluminum tumblers? Would you say that you are pro peanut brittle, anti peanut brittle, or would you say “I do not have a dog in the peanut-brittle fight”?

Would you not like to live for a while in an abandoned silver mine? Have you ever lied to a child, and, if you have, do you find you regret it more or less than lying to an adult? When your webbing goes out on your lawn chairs, do you get webbing kits and restore them or throw them away? Do you use bleach much? Would you say that in general Catholics seem to be intellectually superior to Protestants? Have you ever found live ammunition on the ground? Are girls in your opinion better looking in dresses or in pants? If asked to complete the sentence “Salvation lies in [blank],” how would you complete it? Have you ever heard of a bird bending a wire to use it as a tool? Do you know the current land-speed record? Do you know the word transudate ? Have you ever been given help by an aunt or an uncle? Is it fairer to say that as a child you liked comic books or that you simply could not abide them? Do you know why people include “simply” in constructions such as in the previous question when very often the matter might not be simple at all but in fact complex? If you disliked comic books as a child, would you say the distaste was simple or complex? Do you suppose that a trained cormorant used in fishing must be acquired as a young bird, or will a captive adult, uncomfortable in captivity, nonetheless continue to get fish if thrown in the water on a rope? Do you like opera?

Do you know the names of shoe parts? Are there, would you say, particulars in generalities or generalities in particulars? Are you experienced in any types of eclipse — of the sun, of the moon, of your hopes, of a fool? Are you suspicious of folk who would use the term “barter”? Do you like caramel? What is the most agreeable and least agreeable barnyard animal for you? Do you understand the concept of tensile strength? Does shirking your responsibility matter more or less to you as you age? If you have never shirked your responsibility, would you say you are now more likely to or less likely to than you have been to this point? What if you had an affair with a homeless person you then dropped because you discovered the homelessness, overlooking the preposterousness of your not having known the person homeless to begin with, and then your friends, of whom you don’t really have any but we’ll say you do for the sake of argument, all dropped you because you had shunned the homeless? Do you like what’s called Texas toast, and do you like calling it Texas toast? Have you ever thought you might be clinically mental to any degree? What is something blue? Are you fastidious about keeping the toilet clean? Do you know what an armbar is? Do you know anything about the Holocaust other than the enormity of it? Do you favor one kind of pear over another? Do you wear seat belts? Have you ever been to a VFW dance in a log cabin for couples only? Do you have in general a good feeling about a welding shop or a bad feeling? Have you ever seen straight pubic hair? Are you running out of steam?