Full Article Text
DECEMBER 21, 2010
FRONT PAGE POLITICS BUSINESS MEDIA ENTERTAINMENT COMEDY SPORTS STYLE WORLD GREEN FOOD TRAVEL TECH
LIVING HEALTH DIVORCE ARTS BOOKS RELIGION IMPACT EDUCATION COLLEGE NY LA CHICAGO DENVER BLOGS
Michael Giltz
Freelance writer and raconteur
Posted: November 11, 2009 03:01 PM
BIO
Become a Fan
Get Email Alerts
Bloggers' Index
0
0
views
WHAT'S YOUR REACTION?
Inspiring Funny Hot Scary Outrageous Amazing Weird CrazyBooks: Padgett Powell Has A Few
Questions He'd Like To Ask
Read More: Award Winning , Bestseller , Comic , Edisto , Edisto Revisited , Fiction ,
Novel , Padgett Powell , Southern Writer , Writer , Entertainment News
Are your emotions pure? Are your nerves adjustable?
How do you stand in relation to the potato? Should it
still be Constantinople? Does a nameless horse make
you more nervous or less nervous than a namedhorse? In your view, do children smell good? If
before you now, would you eat animal crackers?
Could you lie down and take a rest on a sidewalk?Did you love your mother and father, and do Psalmsdo it for you? If you are relegated to last place in
every category, are you bothered enough to struggle
up? Does your doorbell ever ring? Is there sand inyour craw? Could Mendeleyev place you correctly in
a square on a chart of periodic identities, or would you resonate all over the board? How manypush-ups can you do?
In retrospect, it should have been obvious. But when Padgett Powell was writing The Interrogative Mood($21.99; Ecco) -- a book composed entirely of questions -- it simply hadn't occurred to him.
"I never considered anyone's answering these questions," says Powell, the acclaimed author of Edisto
and collections of award-winning short stories like Typical . "My connection to the book was trying to
generate the next question, the next correct question. And so I wasn't looking at it in terms of answers. I
was looking at it in terms of interrogative correctitude. Given what you asked, what do you now ask and
not look stupid?
"I got a letter from an editor who said, 'I read your piece in The Paris Review and I read it to my
girlfriend, my new girlfriend, and she answered all the questions and I think I know her better now. Ithank you.' That's the weirdest one I got. Then I got some other letter telling me that somebody was
MOST POPULAR ON HUFFPOSTBIG NEWS: Ellen Degeneres | LeAnn Rimes | Levi Johnston | Movies | Smarter Ideas | More...
LOG IN | SIGN UP
Get Breaking News Alerts
Share
Print
Comments
never spam
Don't Miss Tonight's Rare
Full Moon Eclipse
Don't Ask, Don't Tell
Repeal Passes Senate
Procedural Vote
Sarah Palin Jabs Michelle
Obama's Anti-Obesity
Campaign
Al Franken The Most
Important Free Speech
Issue of Our Time
PHOTOS: 10 Things We've
Accidentally Learned From
Crime Dramas
Timothy Karr Obama FCC
Caves on Net Neutrality --
Tuesday...
PHOTOS: 13 Products
Most Likely To Be Made By
Child Or Forced Labor
Like 37K
Like 40K
Like 5K
Like 10K
Like 1K
Like 7K
Recommend 3K
proposing that they do a party game with the book. I thought, that sounds good. We can get Parker
Brothers to put it in a box and, you know, make cards."
A board game based on a playfully plot-less novel? It's the latest twist in the idiosyncratic but not terribly
unusual career of Powell. Like other writers who achieve exceptional acclaim but not the commensurate
blockbuster status, Powell has bounced around from publisher to publisher, watching his work go in and
out of print while finding refuge in academia. He may not have published a book in the last nine yearsbut Powell has turned the creative writing department at the University of Florida (where he is co-chairwith author David Leavitt) into one of the most influential in the country.
"In fact," says Powell, who is calling from his home outside Gainesville before heading into work, "the
editor who is doing this book, he calls me up periodically and he says, 'Well, everybody I'm running into
up here is out of you. The two Chris's. Chris Bachelder and Chris Adrian. The two Kevins. We've got
Kevin Wilson over here. Kevin Canty over there. Who have you NOT produced?' I said, 'Nobody. They'reall mine. They're ALL mine.'"
(Note: I studied with Powell as an undergrad; don't blame him.)
But it's a lot more fun to be dealing with your own success rather than the reflected glory of writers you
were smart enough to recruit. And The Interrogative Mood has been raking it in, from a 5 star rave by
Time Out New York to praise from the New Yorker (where, ironically, an excerpt from the book was
previously rejected by editor David Remnick). Author Rick Moody kicked himself in a review for not
thinking of the idea himself but added, "I would not have been able to be this clever and this heartfelt,
this funny and this disconsolate, and to make/efface so effectively a narrative that tells its tale onlythrough the process of selecting the seemingly impulsive material." Then Moody proceeded to answer
some of the questions himself.
Amazon.com named the book one of the 100 Best of 2009 (and placed it squarely at #100, which surely
pleased Powell more than being randomly placed at, say, #87 or #24.) And in a sure sign of "this is your
moment-ness," the New York Times Magazine devoted an expansive feature to Powell, which charts his
path from itinerant roofer turned Southern writer golden boy in the style of Walker Percy to his far moreuncategorize-able self today. (Powell is in fine form in the article, offering up anecdotes, for example,
about his purchase of 35 chicks, some of whom now reside in his freezer and none of whom provided him
with a single egg. "Women will weep if you show them frozen dead chicks," observes Powell when herepeats the story to me.)
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 wouldyou prefer to try? What circumstances would be required before you would attempt to garrotesomeone 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 theplayfulness of the preceding questions? Are you surprised at the absence of the whole-earth niche in
the condom market -- a bio-degradable condom, say, or one made of organic materials, if not stone-
1 of 5
Billie Jean King
Repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Is a
Big Deal
Al Franken
The Most Important Free Speech
Issue of Our TimeDON'T MISS HUFFPOST BLOGGERS
HOT TRENDS
johnston in playgirl kim zolciak
pregnant miley cyrus
lap dance video
sarah palin michelle
obama shania twain
More Celebrity News at People.com
More Celebrity News at Popeater.com
John Boehner Strikes Back
Against Sarah Palin
Amanda Knox Court Makes
Crucial Ruling
Like 250
Like 155
Ask Steven Tyler a
Question!
READ MORE
Missing Showgirl'sBoyfriend Abused Her,
Police Say
READ MORE
James Van Der Beek
Introduces Daughter Olivia
READ MORE
Keith Urban Helped NicoleKidman through 'Rabbit
Hole'
The Top Entertainment
News Stories of 2010
'Biggest Loser' Ada Talks
Popularity, Parents
ground then at least something like Gore-Tex?
Naturally, since his new book has proven such a success, it was roundly rejected by virtually everyone.
But before getting that story I challenge Powell to reject his claim -- made after he published his second
novel -- that he had never written a short story. Since that statement, some of his most acclaimed work
has come via the short story. (Also some of his funniest, which is one reason Powell may have fallen out
of favor for a while. Funny is not appreciated in literary circles -- unless your name involves "Mark" and
"Twain".)
"I have never written a short story," insists Powell, who is divorced with two fine daughters, one an
actress in Chicago and the other a graduate of a superior college and handy with firearms. "I've written
some three page novels and some thirteen page novels. I've written some novels predicated on such poorideas that they were over in three pages. In fact, I was trying to sell a book before this one fluked out.And I call it Cries For Help: 45 Failed Novels. Which is probably a better title than the book is. To judge
by its reception, it must be.
"I think it is fair to say I've never written a short story, if you want to hold up say something like a
William Trevor story. No, I can't do that. That fucker's good. But I've written a few novels that peter out
after 20 pages and they kind of look shapely.
"The story is, well first of all the book was written not even as a book. In fact, you can't even properly say
it was written in any traditional sense. I just began putting on my pants and writing these questions andhad nothing better to do. They went on for an alarming time. I was in the neighborhood of a 140 pages
before I started realizing I was becoming the kind of guy who was going to have seven frozen chicks in his
freezer and this was going to be another piece of evidence in that same indictment.
"Nonetheless, it was a book-length manuscript and I sent it. I couldn't get my agent to market it. She
wanted to send the 45 Failed Novels. I wanted this sent with it because it's a failed novel too and it might
as well be 46 failed novels. I wanted an editor to be able to see that he had the option of getting a piece of
this to be one of the failed 45 or 46. But I couldn't get anybody to go along with that plan. The 45 Failed
Novels were being rejected by everyone. And one party - and this will be relevant - rejected them twice.
One party was obliged to look at them twice. This will be relevant in this story.
"What I had done with Book Of Questions was I sent it to The New Yorker. [An editor] liked it and fixed
up a piece and the fiction staff liked it and they held it about four months and I thought they were goingwith it and then I got a note that said, 'David cannot be convinced.' That was given me on Christmas Eveon a Muslim island off the coast of Kenya. My Christmas present was that: 'David cannot be convinced.'
"Then, during the next year or so, the 45 Failed Novels were rejected by everyone in New York, including
the one significant party twice. I had my agent send the Book of Questions to The Paris Review. It was
the last thing I was going to do with it. Paris Review bought an excerpt. And the editor who bought itcalled and said, 'I'm leaving here but I want to work this piece before I go.' I said, 'Good.' And then he
called up and he said, 'I still want to work this piece before I go, but I'm not going to have time. I'm going
to give it to [another editor]. You're in good hands. Sorry. I've got to go.' Where are you going? 'Oh, I'mgoing to Ecco.' Alright. See you.
"Then he calls up and says, 'Hey, I'm at Ecco. We're going to do this book.' I said, 'Ok, that's good. But do
you not know that Dan Halpern just rejected my other book there for the second time?' He said, 'No.' Orhe did. I actually don't know if I brought this up, but I thought that the thing wasn't gonna fly. Here's
that story. One of the rejected parties - the one who had rejected it twice - was the editor in chief at Ecco.
He rejected it twice because my friend Pete Dexter leaned on him and made him read it again. And herejected it twice. Then here comes his new editor with a manuscript that he carries into the building in hisbriefcase. Never mailed in there. It's a manuscript he found on the street. He says, 'Hi, I'm Matt Weiland
and here's my first book!' They say that a new editor has an inviolate honeymoon. I thought the
honeymoon would be abruptly over if the marriage itself wasn't annulled. But it didn't happen. Itworked. So he's publishing the book. And the book has this strange buzz. It's looking like his honeymoon
isn't going to be ended on my behalf."
Writing the book, it turns out, was much easier than selling it to a publisher.
"I was innocent of method and innocent of figuring anything out," says Powell, who is 57 years old. "I just
did it. There are certain little principles and guides for doing it but I don't know exactly what they are. I
think they're kind of a shifting palette anyway. Basically it's just sentence to sentence. And those things
that come back up, I'm unaware of. I think there's ten references to blue jays. But I can't say reallywhether it's ten or three. Or too many. It was done brainlessly is the best answer.
But it came easily?TOP VIDEO PICKS
1 of 10
Vince Vaughn's New
Bundle of Joy
Paris Hilton's BikerBlunder
Scarlett and Ryan's DinnerDate
MOST DISCUSSED RIGHT NOW
HOT ON FACEBOOK
HOT ON TWITTER
NBA
Video
Poverty
Health
30 Rock
Immigration
Death & Dying
Islam
ChristianityHUFFPOST'S BIG NEWS PAGESTracy Morgan Undergoes
Kidney Transplant
86 Comments
PHOTOS: Paris Hilton
Dons Leather Bodysuit
128 Comments
Guess Who Got A Tattoo
Of Her Daughter
750 Comments
Pantsless Chloe Sevigny
'Needs Therapy' For
Vincent Gallo Sex Scene
515 Comments
Beneath the Feathers:
What 'Black Swan' Says
About Dancers
36 Comments
Nicolas Cage Buys
Pyramid Tomb
135 Comments
WHAT'S YOUR REACTION?
Inspiring Funny Hot Scary Outrageous Amazing Weird Crazy"Yeah, fairly easily," he says. "You get a kind of, I want to say a blank state of mind but it's not really
blank. What it is, you're locating some associations that are not overt. That's probably rule one. For the
most part, don't allow an overt association from sentence to sentence. But that does not eliminate thecovert association. You can't eliminate the covert association. And you don't want to. It's the covert
association you want to be alive so you can actually get the next question.
"And then once in a while I break down and say OK, there's another kind of way of having an overt
association that won't look retarded. That would be a riff like the questions to Jimi Hendrix. So that's the
kind of passage where you can have five or six or eight questions flow from one another, clearly. Some of
those questions are so profoundly ignorant. You talk about fact checking. They got into fact checking atthe Paris Review and it was mortifying. There was a wrangle about Hemingway's lost stories that nearlykilled me. It turns out he didn't lose those stories. They weren't stolen from the platform. And it wasn't
the case that he had 32 bags and couldn't keep track of them, as I had very conveniently imagined. The
stories were stolen somewhere between the hotel and the train. They were in the care of the wife and it's
not known where they were stolen from. Taxi. Left in taxi. Nobody knows, it turns out. In the Paris
Review thing, we changed facts so that we weren't an idiot. But in the Ecco book, the idiocy is preserved."
And Powell's career is revived, even though he had somewhat blithely insisted for a while that he was
retired from writing, when in fact he was merely retired from publishing.
"I was retired and said I was retired and I still more or less feel that way," says Powell. "Perhaps
accidents like this - you now know what an accident this is - perhaps accidents like this punctuate that
retirement or can be hung on the tree of that retirement like a bauble. But I don't think the fundamental
position changes much. Those 45 Novels are still rejected. And what I have now is something that looks
even less probable than this book of questions. Actually when I told you that I wanted the two booksshown at one time, there were actually three books. I wanted all three shown at one time. And this thirdbook could also be taken as a failed novel and could be excerpted. And I'm afraid that it's the hole card
now and it looks less supportable than this thing that brave Mr. Weiland rescued. The future looks about
the way it does when you buy 35 chickens and don't get an egg."
Would it require more energy than you have in order for you to really lose it, or do you think really
losing it can be a function of having too little energy to prevent losing it? Do the people you do not
wish to talk to far exceed the number you do wish to talk to? Do you have much to say to even those
to whom you do wish to speak? Do you know where it went wrong with you? Do you own any goodcopper? Are you favorably disposed to American Indian causes but less so if you must say NativeAmerican causes? Are you more at ease in a veneer of civilization or in a true hardwood of barbary?
What is your favorite piece of equipment on a playground? Do you know by sight and sound an oboe
from a bassoon? When you hear someone say "There'll be hell to pay," do you assume generally thatthere will be or won't be hell to pay?
--30--
Thanks for reading. Visit Michael Giltz at his website and his daily blog. Download his podcast of
celebrity interviews at Popsurfing and enjoy the weekly pop culture podcast he co-hosts at Showbiz
Sandbox . Both available for free on iTunes. Link to him on Netflix and gain access to thousands of
ratings and reviews. NOTE TO READERS: I was provided with a final copy of Powell's book, albeit before I committed to any
coverage. Typically, I write about less than 5% of the many books I'm sent by publishers. I did studyunder Padgett Powell when I was a student at the University of Florida. Usually, I avoid writing aboutpeople I know, however modestly. Though I enjoyed his classes immensely, I haven't spoken to Powell in
perhaps 15 years and considered any conflict of interest to be minimal at best. I never applied for the
writing program (I took creative writing courses as an undergraduate elective) and Powell neverchampioned my fiction to any editor or publisher. (I told you he had good taste.)
Follow Michael Giltz on Twitter: www.twitter.com/michaelgiltz
More in Entertainment...MORE BIG NEWS PAGES »
FOLLOW HUFFINGTON POST
Comments 0 Pending Comments 0View FAQ
Shania Twain
Engaged To
Frederic Thiebaud
'The Fighter' Star
Amy Adams Talks
Weight...
Megan Fox In A
Bikini (PHOTOS)
Kardashian
Christmas Card:
The 'SNL' Spoof
(VIDEO)
FRONT PAGE POLITICS BUSINESS MEDIA ENTERTAINMENT COMEDY SPORTS STYLE WORLD GREEN FOOD TRAVEL TECH
LIVING HEALTH DIVORCE ARTS BOOKS RELIGION IMPACT EDUCATION COLLEGE NY LA CHICAGO DENVER BLOGS
Advertise | Log In | Make HuffPost your Home Page | RSS | Careers | FAQ | Contact Us
User Agreement | Privacy | Comment Policy | About Us | Powered by Movable Type
Copyright © 2010 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc. | "The Huffington Post" is a registered trademark of TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc. All rights reserved.
Recency | PopularityComments are closed for this entry
View All
FRONT PAGE POLITICS BUSINESS MEDIA ENTERTAINMENT COMEDY SPORTS STYLE WORLD GREEN FOOD TRAVEL TECH
LIVING HEALTH DIVORCE ARTS BOOKS RELIGION IMPACT EDUCATION COLLEGE NY LA CHICAGO DENVER BLOGS
Michael Giltz
Freelance writer and raconteur
Posted: November 11, 2009 03:01 PM
BIO
Become a Fan
Get Email Alerts
Bloggers' Index
0
0
views
WHAT'S YOUR REACTION?
Inspiring Funny Hot Scary Outrageous Amazing Weird CrazyBooks: Padgett Powell Has A Few
Questions He'd Like To Ask
Read More: Award Winning , Bestseller , Comic , Edisto , Edisto Revisited , Fiction ,
Novel , Padgett Powell , Southern Writer , Writer , Entertainment News
Are your emotions pure? Are your nerves adjustable?
How do you stand in relation to the potato? Should it
still be Constantinople? Does a nameless horse make
you more nervous or less nervous than a namedhorse? In your view, do children smell good? If
before you now, would you eat animal crackers?
Could you lie down and take a rest on a sidewalk?Did you love your mother and father, and do Psalmsdo it for you? If you are relegated to last place in
every category, are you bothered enough to struggle
up? Does your doorbell ever ring? Is there sand inyour craw? Could Mendeleyev place you correctly in
a square on a chart of periodic identities, or would you resonate all over the board? How manypush-ups can you do?
In retrospect, it should have been obvious. But when Padgett Powell was writing The Interrogative Mood($21.99; Ecco) -- a book composed entirely of questions -- it simply hadn't occurred to him.
"I never considered anyone's answering these questions," says Powell, the acclaimed author of Edisto
and collections of award-winning short stories like Typical . "My connection to the book was trying to
generate the next question, the next correct question. And so I wasn't looking at it in terms of answers. I
was looking at it in terms of interrogative correctitude. Given what you asked, what do you now ask and
not look stupid?
"I got a letter from an editor who said, 'I read your piece in The Paris Review and I read it to my
girlfriend, my new girlfriend, and she answered all the questions and I think I know her better now. Ithank you.' That's the weirdest one I got. Then I got some other letter telling me that somebody was
MOST POPULAR ON HUFFPOSTBIG NEWS: Ellen Degeneres | LeAnn Rimes | Levi Johnston | Movies | Smarter Ideas | More...
LOG IN | SIGN UP
Get Breaking News Alerts
Share
Comments
never spam
Don't Miss Tonight's Rare
Full Moon Eclipse
Don't Ask, Don't Tell
Repeal Passes Senate
Procedural Vote
Sarah Palin Jabs Michelle
Obama's Anti-Obesity
Campaign
Al Franken The Most
Important Free Speech
Issue of Our Time
PHOTOS: 10 Things We've
Accidentally Learned From
Crime Dramas
Timothy Karr Obama FCC
Caves on Net Neutrality --
Tuesday...
PHOTOS: 13 Products
Most Likely To Be Made By
Child Or Forced Labor
Like 37K
Like 40K
Like 5K
Like 10K
Like 1K
Like 7K
Recommend 3K
proposing that they do a party game with the book. I thought, that sounds good. We can get Parker
Brothers to put it in a box and, you know, make cards."
A board game based on a playfully plot-less novel? It's the latest twist in the idiosyncratic but not terribly
unusual career of Powell. Like other writers who achieve exceptional acclaim but not the commensurate
blockbuster status, Powell has bounced around from publisher to publisher, watching his work go in and
out of print while finding refuge in academia. He may not have published a book in the last nine yearsbut Powell has turned the creative writing department at the University of Florida (where he is co-chairwith author David Leavitt) into one of the most influential in the country.
"In fact," says Powell, who is calling from his home outside Gainesville before heading into work, "the
editor who is doing this book, he calls me up periodically and he says, 'Well, everybody I'm running into
up here is out of you. The two Chris's. Chris Bachelder and Chris Adrian. The two Kevins. We've got
Kevin Wilson over here. Kevin Canty over there. Who have you NOT produced?' I said, 'Nobody. They'reall mine. They're ALL mine.'"
(Note: I studied with Powell as an undergrad; don't blame him.)
But it's a lot more fun to be dealing with your own success rather than the reflected glory of writers you
were smart enough to recruit. And The Interrogative Mood has been raking it in, from a 5 star rave by
Time Out New York to praise from the New Yorker (where, ironically, an excerpt from the book was
previously rejected by editor David Remnick). Author Rick Moody kicked himself in a review for not
thinking of the idea himself but added, "I would not have been able to be this clever and this heartfelt,
this funny and this disconsolate, and to make/efface so effectively a narrative that tells its tale onlythrough the process of selecting the seemingly impulsive material." Then Moody proceeded to answer
some of the questions himself.
Amazon.com named the book one of the 100 Best of 2009 (and placed it squarely at #100, which surely
pleased Powell more than being randomly placed at, say, #87 or #24.) And in a sure sign of "this is your
moment-ness," the New York Times Magazine devoted an expansive feature to Powell, which charts his
path from itinerant roofer turned Southern writer golden boy in the style of Walker Percy to his far moreuncategorize-able self today. (Powell is in fine form in the article, offering up anecdotes, for example,
about his purchase of 35 chicks, some of whom now reside in his freezer and none of whom provided him
with a single egg. "Women will weep if you show them frozen dead chicks," observes Powell when herepeats the story to me.)
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 wouldyou prefer to try? What circumstances would be required before you would attempt to garrotesomeone 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 theplayfulness of the preceding questions? Are you surprised at the absence of the whole-earth niche in
the condom market -- a bio-degradable condom, say, or one made of organic materials, if not stone-
1 of 5
Billie Jean King
Repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Is a
Big Deal
Al Franken
The Most Important Free Speech
Issue of Our TimeDON'T MISS HUFFPOST BLOGGERS
HOT TRENDS
johnston in playgirl kim zolciak
pregnant miley cyrus
lap dance video
sarah palin michelle
obama shania twain
More Celebrity News at People.com
More Celebrity News at Popeater.com
John Boehner Strikes Back
Against Sarah Palin
Amanda Knox Court Makes
Crucial Ruling
Like 250
Like 155
Ask Steven Tyler a
Question!
READ MORE
Missing Showgirl'sBoyfriend Abused Her,
Police Say
READ MORE
James Van Der Beek
Introduces Daughter Olivia
READ MORE
Keith Urban Helped NicoleKidman through 'Rabbit
Hole'
The Top Entertainment
News Stories of 2010
'Biggest Loser' Ada Talks
Popularity, Parents
ground then at least something like Gore-Tex?
Naturally, since his new book has proven such a success, it was roundly rejected by virtually everyone.
But before getting that story I challenge Powell to reject his claim -- made after he published his second
novel -- that he had never written a short story. Since that statement, some of his most acclaimed work
has come via the short story. (Also some of his funniest, which is one reason Powell may have fallen out
of favor for a while. Funny is not appreciated in literary circles -- unless your name involves "Mark" and
"Twain".)
"I have never written a short story," insists Powell, who is divorced with two fine daughters, one an
actress in Chicago and the other a graduate of a superior college and handy with firearms. "I've written
some three page novels and some thirteen page novels. I've written some novels predicated on such poorideas that they were over in three pages. In fact, I was trying to sell a book before this one fluked out.And I call it Cries For Help: 45 Failed Novels. Which is probably a better title than the book is. To judge
by its reception, it must be.
"I think it is fair to say I've never written a short story, if you want to hold up say something like a
William Trevor story. No, I can't do that. That fucker's good. But I've written a few novels that peter out
after 20 pages and they kind of look shapely.
"The story is, well first of all the book was written not even as a book. In fact, you can't even properly say
it was written in any traditional sense. I just began putting on my pants and writing these questions andhad nothing better to do. They went on for an alarming time. I was in the neighborhood of a 140 pages
before I started realizing I was becoming the kind of guy who was going to have seven frozen chicks in his
freezer and this was going to be another piece of evidence in that same indictment.
"Nonetheless, it was a book-length manuscript and I sent it. I couldn't get my agent to market it. She
wanted to send the 45 Failed Novels. I wanted this sent with it because it's a failed novel too and it might
as well be 46 failed novels. I wanted an editor to be able to see that he had the option of getting a piece of
this to be one of the failed 45 or 46. But I couldn't get anybody to go along with that plan. The 45 Failed
Novels were being rejected by everyone. And one party - and this will be relevant - rejected them twice.
One party was obliged to look at them twice. This will be relevant in this story.
"What I had done with Book Of Questions was I sent it to The New Yorker. [An editor] liked it and fixed
up a piece and the fiction staff liked it and they held it about four months and I thought they were goingwith it and then I got a note that said, 'David cannot be convinced.' That was given me on Christmas Eveon a Muslim island off the coast of Kenya. My Christmas present was that: 'David cannot be convinced.'
"Then, during the next year or so, the 45 Failed Novels were rejected by everyone in New York, including
the one significant party twice. I had my agent send the Book of Questions to The Paris Review. It was
the last thing I was going to do with it. Paris Review bought an excerpt. And the editor who bought itcalled and said, 'I'm leaving here but I want to work this piece before I go.' I said, 'Good.' And then he
called up and he said, 'I still want to work this piece before I go, but I'm not going to have time. I'm going
to give it to [another editor]. You're in good hands. Sorry. I've got to go.' Where are you going? 'Oh, I'mgoing to Ecco.' Alright. See you.
"Then he calls up and says, 'Hey, I'm at Ecco. We're going to do this book.' I said, 'Ok, that's good. But do
you not know that Dan Halpern just rejected my other book there for the second time?' He said, 'No.' Orhe did. I actually don't know if I brought this up, but I thought that the thing wasn't gonna fly. Here's
that story. One of the rejected parties - the one who had rejected it twice - was the editor in chief at Ecco.
He rejected it twice because my friend Pete Dexter leaned on him and made him read it again. And herejected it twice. Then here comes his new editor with a manuscript that he carries into the building in hisbriefcase. Never mailed in there. It's a manuscript he found on the street. He says, 'Hi, I'm Matt Weiland
and here's my first book!' They say that a new editor has an inviolate honeymoon. I thought the
honeymoon would be abruptly over if the marriage itself wasn't annulled. But it didn't happen. Itworked. So he's publishing the book. And the book has this strange buzz. It's looking like his honeymoon
isn't going to be ended on my behalf."
Writing the book, it turns out, was much easier than selling it to a publisher.
"I was innocent of method and innocent of figuring anything out," says Powell, who is 57 years old. "I just
did it. There are certain little principles and guides for doing it but I don't know exactly what they are. I
think they're kind of a shifting palette anyway. Basically it's just sentence to sentence. And those things
that come back up, I'm unaware of. I think there's ten references to blue jays. But I can't say reallywhether it's ten or three. Or too many. It was done brainlessly is the best answer.
But it came easily?TOP VIDEO PICKS
1 of 10
Vince Vaughn's New
Bundle of Joy
Paris Hilton's BikerBlunder
Scarlett and Ryan's DinnerDate
MOST DISCUSSED RIGHT NOW
HOT ON FACEBOOK
HOT ON TWITTER
NBA
Video
Poverty
Health
30 Rock
Immigration
Death & Dying
Islam
ChristianityHUFFPOST'S BIG NEWS PAGESTracy Morgan Undergoes
Kidney Transplant
86 Comments
PHOTOS: Paris Hilton
Dons Leather Bodysuit
128 Comments
Guess Who Got A Tattoo
Of Her Daughter
750 Comments
Pantsless Chloe Sevigny
'Needs Therapy' For
Vincent Gallo Sex Scene
515 Comments
Beneath the Feathers:
What 'Black Swan' Says
About Dancers
36 Comments
Nicolas Cage Buys
Pyramid Tomb
135 Comments
WHAT'S YOUR REACTION?
Inspiring Funny Hot Scary Outrageous Amazing Weird Crazy"Yeah, fairly easily," he says. "You get a kind of, I want to say a blank state of mind but it's not really
blank. What it is, you're locating some associations that are not overt. That's probably rule one. For the
most part, don't allow an overt association from sentence to sentence. But that does not eliminate thecovert association. You can't eliminate the covert association. And you don't want to. It's the covert
association you want to be alive so you can actually get the next question.
"And then once in a while I break down and say OK, there's another kind of way of having an overt
association that won't look retarded. That would be a riff like the questions to Jimi Hendrix. So that's the
kind of passage where you can have five or six or eight questions flow from one another, clearly. Some of
those questions are so profoundly ignorant. You talk about fact checking. They got into fact checking atthe Paris Review and it was mortifying. There was a wrangle about Hemingway's lost stories that nearlykilled me. It turns out he didn't lose those stories. They weren't stolen from the platform. And it wasn't
the case that he had 32 bags and couldn't keep track of them, as I had very conveniently imagined. The
stories were stolen somewhere between the hotel and the train. They were in the care of the wife and it's
not known where they were stolen from. Taxi. Left in taxi. Nobody knows, it turns out. In the Paris
Review thing, we changed facts so that we weren't an idiot. But in the Ecco book, the idiocy is preserved."
And Powell's career is revived, even though he had somewhat blithely insisted for a while that he was
retired from writing, when in fact he was merely retired from publishing.
"I was retired and said I was retired and I still more or less feel that way," says Powell. "Perhaps
accidents like this - you now know what an accident this is - perhaps accidents like this punctuate that
retirement or can be hung on the tree of that retirement like a bauble. But I don't think the fundamental
position changes much. Those 45 Novels are still rejected. And what I have now is something that looks
even less probable than this book of questions. Actually when I told you that I wanted the two booksshown at one time, there were actually three books. I wanted all three shown at one time. And this thirdbook could also be taken as a failed novel and could be excerpted. And I'm afraid that it's the hole card
now and it looks less supportable than this thing that brave Mr. Weiland rescued. The future looks about
the way it does when you buy 35 chickens and don't get an egg."
Would it require more energy than you have in order for you to really lose it, or do you think really
losing it can be a function of having too little energy to prevent losing it? Do the people you do not
wish to talk to far exceed the number you do wish to talk to? Do you have much to say to even those
to whom you do wish to speak? Do you know where it went wrong with you? Do you own any goodcopper? Are you favorably disposed to American Indian causes but less so if you must say NativeAmerican causes? Are you more at ease in a veneer of civilization or in a true hardwood of barbary?
What is your favorite piece of equipment on a playground? Do you know by sight and sound an oboe
from a bassoon? When you hear someone say "There'll be hell to pay," do you assume generally thatthere will be or won't be hell to pay?
--30--
Thanks for reading. Visit Michael Giltz at his website and his daily blog. Download his podcast of
celebrity interviews at Popsurfing and enjoy the weekly pop culture podcast he co-hosts at Showbiz
Sandbox . Both available for free on iTunes. Link to him on Netflix and gain access to thousands of
ratings and reviews. NOTE TO READERS: I was provided with a final copy of Powell's book, albeit before I committed to any
coverage. Typically, I write about less than 5% of the many books I'm sent by publishers. I did studyunder Padgett Powell when I was a student at the University of Florida. Usually, I avoid writing aboutpeople I know, however modestly. Though I enjoyed his classes immensely, I haven't spoken to Powell in
perhaps 15 years and considered any conflict of interest to be minimal at best. I never applied for the
writing program (I took creative writing courses as an undergraduate elective) and Powell neverchampioned my fiction to any editor or publisher. (I told you he had good taste.)
Follow Michael Giltz on Twitter: www.twitter.com/michaelgiltz
More in Entertainment...MORE BIG NEWS PAGES »
FOLLOW HUFFINGTON POST
Comments 0 Pending Comments 0View FAQ
Shania Twain
Engaged To
Frederic Thiebaud
'The Fighter' Star
Amy Adams Talks
Weight...
Megan Fox In A
Bikini (PHOTOS)
Kardashian
Christmas Card:
The 'SNL' Spoof
(VIDEO)
FRONT PAGE POLITICS BUSINESS MEDIA ENTERTAINMENT COMEDY SPORTS STYLE WORLD GREEN FOOD TRAVEL TECH
LIVING HEALTH DIVORCE ARTS BOOKS RELIGION IMPACT EDUCATION COLLEGE NY LA CHICAGO DENVER BLOGS
Advertise | Log In | Make HuffPost your Home Page | RSS | Careers | FAQ | Contact Us
User Agreement | Privacy | Comment Policy | About Us | Powered by Movable Type
Copyright © 2010 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc. | "The Huffington Post" is a registered trademark of TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc. All rights reserved.
Recency | PopularityComments are closed for this entry
View All