The Interrogative Mood

by Padgett Powell

What are three basic things you need to be content in life? Would you rate yourself as more tired than you used to be or as a person who still has all the getup-and-go that it takes? When offered meat or poultry with a stuffing or dressing, do you first taste the meat or the dressing? Do you favor a hemline above or below the knee? Has your position with respect to birders changed over the years or remained the same? If right now you were on your deathbed but not feeling too bad and could have some one thing brought to you, what would it be? Do you like flannel? Is there a location or locale on earth you consistently think of as preferable to the one you are usually in? If asked to draw a circle, will you freehand it or effect a compass with the tools at hand? When you trap a rat in a spring trap, do you feel triumphant or bad? Have you ever knelt down and said to the rat, aloud or not, “It was a mistake, I regret what I have done to you, I wish you could now go on about your business, it’s just that your eating my shit was at the time pissing me off, but now I see that you just had to do it, and what really kills me is how clean and innocent you look”?

  Have we gone on like this long enough?

  DOES INTEGRITY LIE IN failure? Do you recall the last time that you really had fun? If I told you that if I had a wounded blue jay that was content to convalesce under my care in a nice cage with pine bark in the floor of it, and that caring for this bird, and this bird’s tolerance of me as I did so, in his nice fragrant cage, was all I needed to be content, would you think me a little off? Would you likewise take a dim view—isn’t that a nice conceit?—of me if I predict that were the bird to not convalesce to the point that it could be released, but instead were to live apparently happily in the cage until I found it one day on its side, departed, looking up sideways with that terrible glazed eye birds get, that I would be then more devastated than a child? If I told you that I intended to take this shovel, and this fresh bottle of whiskey, and go out and bury my blue jay and never be heard of again, and I invited you to come along, would you come?

  Do you know anything at all about the circumstances by which Leon Trotsky, in exile in Mexico City, happened to be assassinated with an ice ax? Do you find any resemblance between the mouth of a bearded man and a vagina? If you find a resemblance, are you unsettled by it or excited by it or left neutral? Do you like to sharpen pencils? Have you ever seen a woman of a certain age change the pants of a woman twice a certain age? Is there one enterprise or course of action you wish you had undertaken as a younger person but that you feel is bootless to try to pursue now? Does your tolerance for people about you increase or decrease as you age? Have you ever bought and used a petroleum-based spot remover? Have you ever used a petroleum-based spot remover that someone else bought? Is a petroleum-based spot remover something you will use if you find it but which you will not yourself purchase? Is, in your opinion, the work of a mental asylum good or evil? If you were to crash fatally in a small plane, does it matter to you whether you shit your pants before the crash, or after? Do you recall when your last stuffed animal as a child was lost to you, or do you perchance still have one? To what degree are you aware on a daily basis of coming into contact with polyvinyl chloride (PVC)? Does fair weather or foul depress you more? Would you think this assertion true: the ratio of blue snakes to red snakes on earth mirrors exactly the ratio of blue food to red food? Have you known anyone who has drowned?

  If integrity resides in failure, does the abnegation of integrity reside in success? If it is the case, and certainly it must be, that integrity does not always reside in failure, but only when the failure is not casual and not the fault of a want of industry or ambition, and so on, on the part of the failer, then of course it is the case that the abnegation of integrity does not always reside in success, but only when the success is some evil stripe of it that someone has figured out the world does not need more of but that was usually thought of as pretty hot when it got started, like say populating the earth and land development—early successes, as it were, that turn into wholesale fucking disasters…and is it clear to you that I cannot for the life of me think of what the proper opposite of “integrity” is, hence this fey “abnegation of integrity”? Can you think of what the opposite of integrity is? Have you ever witnessed the effect a child can have on a drunk adult if he, the child, repeatedly calls the drunk adult a “poo-poo train”? Would you think a child who calls drunk adults poo-poo trains more inclined to a life of criminality than a child who does not so taunt drunk adults? If you were to travel to the graves of all your known relatives, how many cemeteries would you need visit?

  If you find a bat on the ground, will you give it succor? Is it fair to say that cathedrals tend to be gaudy and overdone, and mosques clean and spare? When you drink from a water hose, are you bothered by the slightly moldlike taste of the rubber sometimes? Do you credit that pickled things and smoked things induce cancer? Do you know the history or provenance or origins of Raggedy Ann and Andy? If you could get a dog small enough to transport in your coat pocket, would you get one? What would be the most fun thing you could do, right now? If you could successfully rob a person of his ill-gotten wealth, would you? Have you ever had to dig a large ditch or a deep hole? If you were in a streaming crowd being pushed into what appears to be a bifurcated tunnel ahead, and over one entrance was the word HOPE and over the other NO HOPE, and you could just barely manage to maneuver yourself within the crush of the crowd into either entrance, and it looked like a preponderance of the crowd was entering Hope, which entrance would you take? If you had a dog small enough to be transported in the pocket of your coat, what would you name it? Do you think in terms of salvation or redemption? Do you appreciate the color changes of leaves in the fall or is that spectacle a tad too popularly sentimental for you? Have you ever been catheterized? Is there a set number of rings you like a phone to ring before you pick up? Does the noise made by corduroy pants irritate you? Do you eat flan? Would you rather see a bay at high tide or low tide? If you could be instantly fluent in a language you do not now speak, what language would it be? Can you change a tire by yourself? Have you ever petted a vole or a shrew? Do you partake of syrups?

  Do you credit that a man seriously advanced “Cogito ergo sum” with a straight face? How many screwdrivers do you think is necessary for able-bodied normal household maintenance? If there were a service whereby everything in your apartment or house could be made to disappear (called House Fire without Fire), without any mess or hassle or delay, and you would receive, in compensation, partial value of the material that disappeared, what partial value would be necessary for you to contract with this service? If you were to be executed and, by standard practice in executions, were offered anything you wanted as a last meal, and instead of ordering lobster or an impossibly thick Porterhouse steak or some peculiar fond dish like fish sticks and packaged macaroni, you said, “I want boiled kittens and puppies, and I want them boiled alive, like crabs,” do you think there would be amusement, and do you think they would comply? If you were to be executed and you ordered boiled kittens and puppies as your last meal and they were served you, would you eat the kittens and puppies? Do you think you would keep a stoic countenance throughout your execution or would you get bad cotton mouth and then get to trembling or puking or jabbering or sobbing or wetting yourself or anything else like that?

  Why do you think red became the dominant color for children’s wagons, to the extent that it is virtually eponymous, as in “little red wagon”? Would you be interested in a rough safari up the Amazon? Do you know the different kinds of courses in which brick and block can be laid? Are you made a little more confident about things when you hear or use the term “hex-head”? Do you not think the next big disorder after chronic dehydration will be chronic asphyxiation? If you have a dog and you lie down beside him, do you prefer that he slap the floor gently once or twice with his tail in acknowledgment of your joining him, or that he lick you in the face and shovel his head into your neck and drive you off the floor with his boundless enthusiasm for you?


  What are the instances in your life when you have been seen naked that you did not wish to be seen naked? Do you understand exactly what malt is? Do you understand exactly what sorghum is? If you had to be struck by lightning or by a car, which would it be? Will you use the phrase “forever and a day,” and will you deal with someone who uses it? Does the word thumb impress you as somehow having a power or meaning beyond what it denotatively should have—I guess I mean, does it spook you a little, or sound totemic or talismanic, or maybe pornographic?

  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?

  If someone approached you saying “Lead me to the music,” how would you respond? Is there a name to complete this progression: Rasputin, Robespierre, Robbe-Grillet, Robert Goulet, and…? If you could spend some time with a young Judy Garland or a young Lucille Ball, whom would you pick? If you had house painters drinking on the job, would you provide them booze? Is there anything or anyone that you’d say you are “enamored of”? If you could disappear from your native country and live comfortably in another, what country would you choose? What is your position on the recreational use of drugs, and, if you partake, do you have a favorite drug? Is to your mind the phrase “cruel and unusual punishment” in any way oxymoronic? Can you define “ayurvedic”? If you were in a metal-roofed bungalow in a tropical country during a seemingly endless monsoon rain and were told that you were under house arrest and not to leave the bungalow, which instruction you could barely make out under the deafening rain on the metal roof, what would be your first response? Will you buy expensive stationery or will pretty much any old paper do for your correspondence? Have you ever crossed a river sill? Do you know what is meant by halberd and halyard? Do you sleep in pajamas? Do you enjoy defecating? Is there hope for peace in the world, all over it and at one time?

  Will you be traveling significantly this year? I believe I asked you this before, but let me again if I did, because it is important to me: can you picture those old metal roller skates that had a metal shell or clamp up front under which you slid your shoe and a leather ankle strap in the rear to secure your ankle, the chief feature of which skates was that they had no flexibility or suspension and the wheels gained no traction whatsoever if you were on a surface smooth enough to pretend to skate on in the first place, and which, the wheels, since that surface was generally concrete, gradually wore down to sandblasted-looking remnants of themselves and became even more useless and treacherous than they had been new, so that the net effect of skating on these things was akin to ice skating on concrete? Weren’t those old metal roller skates great? Would the equivalent today to the old metal roller skate not involve some Kevlar/Teflon-ey wheels, a microchip gyroscope, a laser level, a GPS, a twenty-four-hour customer-service support hotline, a built-in cell phone with a speed dialer to call it, a liability waiver/rider to attach to one’s homeowner’s insurance policy, and a streaming video feed into the brain of the skater of an exciting virtual landscape to skate when the skater just preferred to put on the skates, or think about the skates, and stay on the couch?