“Are you happy? Do we need galoshes? Are bluebirds perfect? Do you know the distinctions, empirical or theoretical, between moss and lichen? Is it clear to you why I am asking you all these questions? Should I go away? Leave you alone? Should I bother but myself with the interrogative mood?”

Like David Foster Wallace or George Saunders, the acclaimed writer Padgett Powell is fascinated by what it feels like to walk through everyday life, to hear the swing and snap of American talk, to be both electrified and overwhelmed by the mad cacophony—the “muchness”—of America. The Interrogative Mood is Powell’s wildly original and absorbing response, a bebop solo of a book in which—could it be? is it possible?—every sentence is a question.

A writer touted as the best of his generation by Saul Bellow twenty years ago and hailed recently by the widely-read blogger Maud Newton as “a virtuoso stylist and master of comic timing,” perhaps only Powell could pull off such a remarkable stylistic feat: The Interrogative Mood is an exuberant meditation on life and language, as playful and profound as Nicholson Baker’s The Mezzanine and Colson Whitehead’s Colossus of New York. The Interrogative Mood will leave readers looking at the world through fresh eyes.

On Sale: 10/13/2009