Padgett Powell - The Interrogative Mood

WOULD YOU LIKE TO live a life that allows for frequent use of acronym, as in “Let’s proceed according to SOP?” Would you rather have a swimming pool or a small private gymnasium? Do you have any experience that suggests there was a higher water table when you were a child than there is now? Do you recall that once chinchilla farming was advertised in the back of a lot of magazines, with perhaps the same frequency and in the position that the Chia Pet was advertised later? Would you agree with me if I said that the shotgun, when configured for sport and not for bank robbing, etc., is a friendlier weapon than a rifle or a pistol? Has the importance of “being a gentleman,” if not also what is meant by being a gentleman, and why one should be one, and who can or should be one, changed over time? Have you heard the expression “Pats on the back in high school become kicks in the ass in life”?

The terrible twining calipers lifted the boy’s brain from its pan — does this frighten you, amuse you, or leave you indifferent? Is it a sound observation that a bird soars in direct relation to its proclivity to eat carrion, and flies in direct relation to its proclivity to hunt live prey? If you were in a besieged medieval castle or garrison or town, can you imagine something worse than the enemy’s lobbing over your walls a putrid cow that exploded on impact and got on you? I guess a load of flaming canisters that burned you or a thousand plague-carrying live rats lofted over and bursting from their confines might in the end exceed a cow in terms of projected damage, but doesn’t that putrid cow somehow still take the cake? Are you very appreciative of Yeats? Are you more fond of maple syrup or honey? Do you go to church? Do you believe?

Do you enjoy taking narcotics? Have you ever had a biopsy performed on a sensitive area, such as the tongue? Does it bother you, or thrill you, to spend holidays intended for conviviality alone? How late in life do you think it is reasonable to anticipate the excitement of meeting a new lover? Would you like to live for a good period of time in India? What would you think an Uzi machine gun might cost? If you had to sleep overnight confined with a polar bear or an anaconda, which would you pick? If you could be reeducated from the ground up by world-class teachers in either literature or mathematics, which field would you take? Do you like shoes or are they just necessary baggage? Do you know anything about cement?

If a woman were to tell you “I’m a pretty darn good cook if I must say so myself” and then offer you meat loaf or spaghetti, which would you take? Would you prefer to go fishing beside the rich on a pristine mountain stream or beside the poor on a polluted canal? Have you ever spent time with European youth who regard themselves revolutionaries? Have you ever spent time with European youth who regard themselves revolutionaries who did not smoke? Did they not smoke to the extent that it wasn’t the cloying annoying asphyxiating politics that got you, but the smoke? If you decide to have, and set out to execute, “a really good day” for yourself, does it work or often not work? Have you ever seen an unfriendly Dalmatian?

Would you rather be beaten with a board or a chain? Does any particular person strike you as the most intelligent you have seen or known? Have you ever participated in a cakewalk? What do you take on popcorn? Do you know what is meant by high explosive? What term would most accurately oppose the term “rigorous argument”? Would you rather spend an hour driving a hot rod or talking to a whore? If you could elect to find yourself in a mahogany Chris-Craft powerboat on Lake Michigan in 1930 and then live out the life of that person in that time without returning to your life in this time, would you? Have you ever bred mice? Do you like tar? Do you know much about plate tectonics? Do you regard yourself as redeemed, redeemable, or irretrievably lost? Do you find that the flavor butter pecan, as in butter-pecan ice cream, sounds better than it tastes? What is the loudest noise you have ever heard? Have you done any mountain climbing? Would you eat a monkey? What broke your heart?

When the going gets tough, are you one of the tough that gets going? Have you ever dreamed you had apartments you were only sometimes aware you had? Do you have any ballet training, and if not, would you like some? Have you ever seen Newton’s Optiks ? I have a vision of Debbie Marsden in a light blue dress saying somewhat proudly as we did the dishes that we would not do the flatware because “Mommie scalds these” have you ever heard of someone boiling the silverware in her own household? Do you think Debbie Marsden might have become maladjusted somehow? Do you think there is any statistical merit to the possibility that quiet shy girls stand a chance higher in proportion to that of more robust girls of turning nymphomaniac?

What is it called when a color has a white chalkiness in it? Are you troubled by the fact that tweezers are generally so poorly made that they do not grip anything well? Are you comforted by having a good tool in your hand whether you are to do anything with it or not, or even if you do not know how to use the tool? If we were to scramble for change because we heard the ice-cream man coming, on our knees digging into the recesses of the sofa with the cushions on top of our arms, and we sensed the ice-cream man was passing by and we had found no change so we just relaxed there with our arms outstretched and our faces on the knobby sofa cushions, how long could we hold the position, what could we talk about, and do you think we could be relatively content there or would we be impatient to get up and brush ourselves off and put our adult selves back together and be on about the important business of our lives?

DO YOU TAKE PLEASURE in wiping a surface clean? If you lived in a little bunk on a big boat or barge and anything you had onboard had to be in the aggregate about the size of a toaster, what would you have onboard? Would you prefer for company a goat or a sheep? What kind of person have you heard use the term “upchuck”? When someone upchucks near you, do you ever also upchuck? When was the last time you went to church? Do you recall the last conversation you had with your parents? If you could choose between sanding something valuable until there was a good surface on it and then painting it correctly with a good paint or varnish and having it look wonderful, or setting something worthless on fire and having it burn until there was absolutely nothing left of it but a handsome pile of ash, which endeavor would you take?

What is the largest zone of neglect in your life? Do you enjoy the study of physics? Have your own forays into plumbing been successful? Do you wonder more what has become of the normal people you have known or the weird people you have known? If you were the victim of a violent crime or a close member of your family was the victim and the perp alleged a junk-food defense, would you be more upset or less upset than if he did not allege a junk-food defense? Do you have a shorter temper than usual with a person who is snapping chewing gum? For New Year’s Eve, do you prefer a big loud drunk party at which say someone pogos nude across the room, or would you like to stand beside a tree alone and see if there is any wind in it?

What is your favorite fabric? Have you ever raised a wild baby bird? Which of your parents would you say was the more selfish? Do you have the patience for pickup sticks? Do you like high-tech gadgetry? Are there any significant personal betrayals in your past, to you or by you? Do you know what is meant exactly by synthetic motor oil? Do you know what famous person complained famously that many men produce only excrement? If a man completed building a model airplane and ordered a subscription to a newspaper on a given day, would he have been more productive than if he had only produced excrement? Would he be better than they if he wrote a beautiful piece of music that was listened to by hundreds of men or even thousands as they produced only excrement? What if a couple of them or even hundreds annoyed by the music turn it off as they produce only excrement? What if the excrement producers regard as holy more or less that production and admit no distraction from their mission? What if they yell from the chamber where they ply their industry “Turn that crap off!” speaking of the music that someone has thoughtlessly left playing at too high a volume for their comfort? What if they have one of those German shelf toilets that allows the inspection of the feces and as they inspect the feces it is established that no one is so inspecting the music to ascertain its quality? Things are a little different now that we have some quality control going down on the excrement end and no quality control going down on the productive-geniuses-live-better-lives end, aren’t they?