so i’ve been doing this thing for most of 2009, and a little while back i realized that meant i’d get to make my very own top 10 list soon. top 10 lists are usually pretty dumb (i mean, i’m almost never included), but i thought it would be fun to make one anyway.
then padgett powell comes along and ruins it, because his new novel? (question mark his, or ecco press’s), the interrogative mood, is hands down the best book of the year, and there’s just no point trying to create false suspense. anyway, i think there’s good reason to get the word out now.
why?
well, let’s start with you, and how unfaithful you’ve been to padgett powell. when was the last time you sat a friend down and forced a copy of one of powell’s books into his or her hand and then made sure that friend read it, at least for a minute, knowing full well he or she wouldn’t be able to stop? did you even notice that the man hasn’t released a book in nearly a decade?
if you’ve never insisted that someone read powell then i don’t really want to know you. but there is one convincing reason i can think of why you wouldn’t notice he hadn’t published a book in a long time, and that’s because the books he’s already put out are worth returning to again and again, and they remain fresh and exciting. still, it must have crossed your mind at some point, no? some little nagging in your soul? a powell-shaped hole that threatened to gape some summer afternoon?
i can’t really get on the new york times‘s case this time. they published a good (i do think it was good, but it threatened, i think, to border on the sentimental with its hype-turned-underdog thesis) (oh yeah, the mention that powell has two unpublished collections — will someone get on top of that?) long profile and a posi-review.
my only complaint about the latter is the suggestion that his previous novels are “fictions of some lyrical force that suffered from rickety characters and unmoored plots.” this is a big complaint, but one i don’t want to get into here except to say this: one of the reasons that i’m an unabashed powell devotee is because his characters strike me as totally authentic in the same way that most characters that the times would describe as authentic strike me as inauthentic. for now we’ll have to agree to disagree, but one day i will return to teach you about the way people are.
an aside — just a few days before the review ran, i had beers with josh emmons, the fellow who wrote it, really by accident. we happened to be watching the phillies game at the same bar and had a friend there in common. alas, we only talked about the phillies and other things philadelphian, so i did not get the chance to set him straight on powell’s characters, as i did not know he had an opinion on them.
am i softening in my old age?
the book.
i've been here for years
don’t listen to them when they tell you the thing about the book is that it’s all in questions. it is all in questions, but that’s not the thing. besides, powell’s not the first to do that. ron silliman wrote a long piece all in questions. and gilbert sorrentino, i think. the thing about this is it’s all questions written by padgett powell, which means it’s sentences written by powell, and so it’s easy to lose track of the fact that they’re questions because you get wrapped up in the beauty of them and the humor and the brains.
so the book tends to alternate between quick, jab-like non sequiturs, like –
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?
these were randomly chosen. the first question seems random (although it isn’t entirely random, as one of the themes that runs through the book is the tension between modern and traditional modes of living and whether modern people are capable of self-sufficiency) (sorghum being used for cultivation) (and also just before that, the narrator asks “Do you understand exactly what malt is?” — sorghum also being used to make booze) (thank you, wikipedia), and the second seems like the kind of question i might have used, misguidedly or not, on a first date. (it also points to a usage tendency — lightning and car are two different types of struck, and powell plays off of this aspect of language throughout.) the third question really starts to bring the narrator’s personality across, the final clause suggesting, even in the interrogative mood, that the questioner is the kind of person who might not deal with someone who uses the phrase “forever and a day.” probably we’d all like to think of ourselves as the type of person who wouldn’t associate with the type of person who would use the phrase, but are we the type of person who realizes it without being asked?
– and then longer questions that are like stories in themselves:
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?
the fact that this question revolves around thumb (one of the things that makes us human) colors the meaning of the sentence. but it’s interesting that powell writes “the word thumb” as opposed to “thumb,” as language and analysis of language are also among the things that make us human. “spook,” “totemic,” “talismanic,” and “pornographic,” are all such idiosyncratic but also true and human responses to the word thumb that it makes it really hard to believe that anyone ever doubted powell’s ability with character, josh.
there’s more to this sentence, and really i could keep going on about it, but i’m starting to sound like a sycophant, so why don’t you just reread it and enjoy and then i’ll finish up.
okay, other sentences are longer and more obviously story-like, and you can find some of them on the internet. they are frequently beautiful in and of themselves, and even better in context — there are subtle and unsubtle themes and leitmotifs that run throughout to the point where i really did find myself asking how this book was composed, but only when i wasn’t reading it, because when i was reading it i was totally absorbed, no joke.
so writers — the contest for 2009 is decided. powell wins. you are now all vying for positions 2 through 9. and unfortunately for you, 2010 has already been decided (i hope you learn to speak french because i was speaking crazy bullshit about you 1 second ago) (and no, that link was not to my book — my book will have to be number 2 in 2010), but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t keep trying to impress me.
Okay, okay. I will read Edisto.
that’s another jewel in my heavenly crown.