Padgett Powell - The Interrogative Mood

DO YOU FIND THE phrase “the verdant selvage of Michigan” intriguing? Do you engage in any ritualistic behavior? Do you favor the toad over the frog? If someone asks you, “What on earth makes the least sense to you?” can you answer? Do you have a favorite dinosaur, and do you trust that the popular images of dinosaurs bear any resemblance to what they really looked like, and do you have any idea how dinosaur scientists think they know, from bones alone, what the damned things looked like?

Do you enjoy taking cabs? Do you employ a maid, and, if you do not, would you like to? Would you name a child Jason? Do you know that the action of thirst or hunger is called “the mechanism” and that the mechanism of a pistol is called “the action”? If you could wear a loud-color pair of pants today, what color would it be? What is the smallest fishing hook or lure you have ever used? Have you lost or gained hair as you age? What national cuisine strikes you as the best? When, for something like a Halloween carnival, you want to have blindfolded children think they are putting their hands in a bucket of eyeballs, what do you use for the eyeballs? Was there a particular James Bond woman that you wanted sexually more than others, or a particular James Bond? How many push-ups can you do?

Do you know what the longest military siege in history was? Do you know that in candy making, in the timed boiling of sugar, you must use a thermometer — that unlike in all other kinds of cooking I am aware of, like, say, deep frying, you cannot just eyeball the heat? Would you think peculiar a man who upon the demise of his last pet had it mounted and swore off any more live pets? If you could witness a whirling dervish performance or a full-blown municipal riot, which would you take? What if the famous line “I have always depended upon the kindness of strangers” had been “I have always depended upon the freshness of air”? Would you feel better if you could put on a pair of good handmade shoes and just walk around? Would you like to go to Pondicherry? If you could reverse or bend a moment of history into an outcome regarded as the opposite of what happened, or at least as substantially different, what moment would it be? When you make a grilled-cheese sandwich, assuming you butter the bread (and if you don’t, just take a break here), can you detail the manner in which you butter the bread? Do you find “in a New York minute” or “in a heartbeat” more annoying? When was the last time you saw a peacock, and when was the last time you were completely not nervous? Do women sleeping in men’s pajamas strike you as affected, practical, or sexually attractive? Do you like burlap? Do you know the provenance of the phrase “suck an egg,” and do you know the import of the insult “go suck an egg”? What has been so far the best single day of your life?

Isn’t “in tattered array” lovely? Is there a connection between beholden and behemoth ? Would you say that in general your affairs are in arrears or in order? Is that the same as saying in the red or in the black? Have you ever chartered a plane or a boat? Do you use the term “wiggle room”? Do you think of an angel as something that could fit on the head of a pin? Do you have long-term friends whom you assume are friends for life who suddenly abandon you, as it were, or at any rate declare one way or another that it won’t be “friends for life” after all? Do you struggle against this attrition or do you accept it as part of the wholesale attrition of aging? Do you have any of your school report cards or childhood athletic trophies? Is the bone around the eye socket called the occipital bone or occipital socket or something like that? Would you pick up a lamprey eel or a hellbender? If you could grow your own coffee, would you? Have you ever managed to pet a chicken? Does the wholesale attrition of aging become in effect your not caring about much, or conceivably anything, the way you once might have, and do you see yourself finally caring about nothing at all or do you see yourself taking a stand for a few things, as though you might be heading for your own private senile Alamo? Do you remember the custom automotive gas pedal that resembled a large bare chrome human foot? Were you ever whipped with a belt or a hairbrush? At what age would you say your character was set — that is, when do you think you were you? Out of all the times in your life you have wept, can you select a time that you most wish you had not wept? Are you as fond as I of cobalt glass?

May I ask you to picture a garter snake eating a Christmas ornament and dying from it as a preliminary to subsequent questions I may or may not ask? May I hasten to add that this image is not mine but that of a girl or woman of my acquaintance who wrote of it? Do you know the delicate powdery tinfoil used to wrap individual sticks of chewing gum — is it not the case that this foil is very slightly quilted? At what point in human life would you say the nostril transforms from a cute thing to a not cute thing? Have you noticed the penchant of some birds, notably in my experience shore birds, to stand on one leg with the other fully retracted so that you think for a bit you have a remarkable incidence of one-legged birds who have adapted very well to their deformity? Do you think it plausible that a girl twenty years his junior could seduce a man by telling him of a garter snake eating a Christmas ornament and dying from it?

Is the altering of the trajectory of bullets entering water related to the bending of light entering water? If you could live in a culture where rugs are still hung out and beaten, as opposed to a culture where they are not hung out and beaten, would you opt for the rug-beating culture? Do you ever devote yourself to making a cake and then sit down and eat it? Were the Sunbeam bread girl and the Coppertone girl related? I have asked you before if you have used a torque wrench but cannot remember your answer: if you have, did you find knowing the torque gratifying or did knowing it strike you as fussy and recherché? Do you take pleasure in drinking from an old-fashioned waxed-paper cup as opposed to a plastic cup? Will you nibble a little at a waxed-paper cup? Do you know any dogs that have a pet stuffed animal into their maturity? Would you rather see a show about a military campaign or about a ballet? Can you knit? After what age do you find pothead jazz enthusiasts tiresome or embarrassing?

DO YOU LIKE A smooth pond or a ripple upon a pond? If you were to participate in a spice war, what spice would you fight for? Of which lost or destroyed culture are you most fond? Does sadness or irony reside for you in the delicacy of a rodent’s nest, and in the pink hairless babies? If I said to you “tree wound” and “blood type,” would you think there was a connection? Do you like a loose or tight inseam in your pants? Have you ever kept up or do you now keep up with a comic strip? What is your longest stay in a hospital as an inpatient? Can you eat a green orange with the same pleasure as an orange orange? Are “wooly bully” and “wooly booger” related, and do you know what is denoted by either term? When you play chess, are you tempted to call the rook a castle? Would you rather read about a leveraged buyout or the firing of a football coach? Have you ever heard the malaprop “brain truss”? How many jokes can you tell?

Were you ever involved in a seduction of, or by, a babysitter? What color most flatters you? In your opinion, who makes the best optics in the world? Have you ever hiked a little nervously in grizzly country and been assured along the way by the mildest-mannered and theretofore most sensible woman in the company that there is nothing to worry about because she intends to strike any bears molesting the party with a hammer? Are you anywhere near as strongly drawn as am I to the notion of the rogue water moccasin without having any real idea what defines such a creature or his behavior? Have you ever given a child a pet? Do you know if the bark in the crotches of trees is specialized and called specifically crotch bark? What is the term opposite to “economic downturn”? How often would you say you burn food? What is the cruelest lie you were ever told? Have you ever heard a woman screaming on the street and looked for the source and not found it? That question I asked earlier about the tinfoil chewing-gum wrappers — are you aware that the edge of the wrapper is pinked, if I am using the term correctly? Do you wish to be in a thunderstorm or not to be in a thunderstorm? Do you like sheet cake? Does any one holiday annoy you more than other holidays? Have you witnessed the actual moment of the death of anything or anyone? Are you comfortable in drawstring pants?