Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

Sean Kinch

Inquisitive

Padgett Powell returns with a novel written entirely in questions

July 15, 2010 Padgett Powell is a genius of American letters, a brilliant but eccentric writer who looms on the margins of the mainstream. After his first novel, Edisto (1984), won critical praise and an enthusiastic readership, his writing drifted into “surreal lines,” as he describes it, eschewing conventional plot and sympathetic characters for experiments in voice and form. After nine years of silence, Powell has returned with The Interrogative Mood, and readers may once again enjoy his trippy world play and skewed world view. He will give a free public reading at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference on July 18 at 8:15 p.m.

Read more
TAKE THE SHORT READER SURVEY! CHAPTER 16 SURVEYOR SURVEYING