Padgett Powell
Padgett Powell
Padgett Powell is an American novelist in the Southern literary tradition. His debut novel, Edisto, was nominated for the American Book Award and was excerpted in The New Yorker. Powell has written five more novels—including A Woman Named Drown, Edisto Revisited, a sequel to his debut, Mrs. Hollingsworth's Men, The Interrogative Mood: A Novel?, and You & Me, his most recent—and three collections of short stories. In addition to The New Yorker, Powell's work has appeared in The Paris Review,...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth25 April 1952
CountryUnited States of America
They got into fact checking at the 'Paris Review,' and it was mortifying. There was a wrangle about Hemingway's lost stories that nearly killed me. It turns out he didn't lose those stories. They weren't stolen from the platform.
I am writing a book more improbable than 'The Interrogative Mood' that I call 'Manifesto'. It's two guys talking who speak artificially conveniently.
I stuff animals I find; I do roadkill. They're strangely fun to have. They're like easy-to-control pets.
I think William Trevor is as good as it gets. Whenever I want a book to do exactly what it says it will, I read him.
I've sat down and written with a more or less supportable or insupportable idea or thing to say, and it ends. When it's not 200 pages, people want to call it a story. I guess they're entitled to do that. In my view, if it were a supportable idea, it would have gone 200 pages, and it didn't.
If I tell you that I have robbed a bank, prepare the correct reaction.
Heavy booze is a big time vacation, but you come back with a headache.