The Interrogative Mood by Padgett Powell Read Free Book Online Page A

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 theeyeballs? 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? Doyou 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