Novels
- Edisto (1984)
- A Woman Named Drown (1987)
- Edisto Revisited (1996)
- Mrs. Hollingsworth’s Men (2000)
- The Interrogative Mood (2009)
- You & Me (2012)
Collections
- Typical (1991)
- Aliens of Affection (1998)
- You & I (2011)
- Cries for Help, Various (2015)
Novellas
- The Imperative Mood (2012)
Non fiction
- Indigo (2021)
Novels Book Covers
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Non fiction Book Covers
Padgett Powell Books Overview
Edisto
Padgett Powell has received the Prix de Rome of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Whiting Writer’s Award, and a nomination for the National Book Award. He teaches in Gainesville, Florida, where he was born in 1952. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, Harper s, and many other periodicals. Simons Everson Manigault ‘You say it Simmons. I m a rare one m Simons’ lives with his mother, an eccentric professor known as the Duchess, on an isolated and undeveloped strip of South Carolina coast. Convinced that her son can be a writer of genius, the Duchess has immersed Simons in the literary classics since birth ‘Like some kids swat mobiles, I was to thumb pages’ and has given him free rein to gather materials in such spots as the Baby Grand, a local black nightclub. ‘It was an assignment. I m supposed to write. I m supposed to get good at it.’Although possessed of a vocabulary and sophistication beyond his years, Simons feels the normal adolescent bewilderment about the behavior of his parents. His conventional father, the Progenitor, has recently left the family in a dispute over Simon s upbringing and has moved to nearby Hilton Head, where he would like to see his son raised among the orthodox surroundings of condominiums, country clubs, and private schools. At the book s center is Taurus, an enigmatic father surrogate who tutors the boy in the art of watching the world without presumption. Edisto is, as Walker Percy observed, ‘a truly remarkable first novel, both as a narrative and in its extraordinary use of language. It reminds one of The Catcher in the Rye, but it s better sharper, funnier, and more poignant.’ ‘When asked for a list of the best American writers of the younger generation, I invariably put the name of Padgett Powell at the top.’ Saul Bellow’ This is distinctly a tour de force…
I found myself increasingly charmed by the book s wit and impressed by its originality. Some turn of phrase, some flash of humor, some freshly observed detail, some accurately rendered perception of a child s pain or a child s amazement transfigures nearly every page. Powell s ear is acute: one of the pleasures of the book is his ability to catch the nuances of Southern speech, whether it is the malicious conversation of the Doctor s academic colleagues at a cocktail party or the genial banter of country folks at the fishing pier.’ The New York Review of Books’A remarkable book…
there is not a line that simply slides by; each, in one way or another, turns things to a fresh and unexpected angle. There are splendid things said.’ Richard Eder, Los Angeles Times Book Review’Simons Manigault is brother to all literary adolescents Mailer s D.J., Salinger s Holden Caufield, Joyce s Stephen Dedalus…
Edisto is a sparkling read, so full of an energetic intelligence, inventiveness, love of language, and love of people…
Padgett Powell is an extravagantly talented writer.’ Ron Loewinsohn, The New York Times Book Review’Edisto is a startling book, full of new sights, sounds, and ways if feeling. Mr. Powell weaves wonderful tapestries from ordinary speech; his people, black and white, whether speaking to each other or past each other, tells us things that we never heard before. The book is subtle, daring, and brilliant.’ Donald Barthelme’Sly, pungent, lyric, funny, and unlikely to be forgotten.’ R. Z. Sheppard, Time’Powell creates a language that captures rhythms and reflections that are at once original and true.’ Peter S. Prescott, Newsweek
A Woman Named Drown
Powell’s second novel takes its narrator on a quiet romp of seeming dissipation through the South from Knoxville, Tennessee, to remote parts of Florida and his home in Lafayette, Louisiana. ‘Extravagantly comic.’ Time.
Edisto Revisited
Padgett Powell’s fourth work of fiction picks up several years after his first novel, Edisto, leaves off, on a strip of coast in the low country of South Carolina. ‘Headlong, often hilarious, and sneakily profound: like Edisto, a must read.’ Ian Frazier.
Mrs. Hollingsworth’s Men
At her kitchen table somewhere in the South, Padgett Powell’s narrator embarks on a spirited and often hilarious imagining of certain historical figures and current national preoccupations. Ostensibly writing her grocery list, Mrs. Hollingsworth most happily loses her sense of herself. Her list becomes a discovery of the things she has and those she lacks, including men even her own husband. Mrs. Hollingsworth begins her list by imagining a lost love story in which she is playful with and disdainful of the conventions of Southern literature. Soon tiring of that, she decides to turn up her imagination. For reasons unclear to her, the Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest, an icon of the Lost Cause, rides into her tired lost love story. He appears as a hologram created by a media giant, Roopit Mogul, who aims to find the real New Southerner in a man who can recognize General Forrest’s image. Into this surreal atmosphere enter Mrs. Hollingsworth’s all too real daughters, the forgotten husband, Mr. and Mrs. Mogul, the boys of the neighborhood, and petty criminals named Oswald and Bundy. Within this singular narrative collage, strong tenderness arises, with accounts of genuine lost love, both familial and wholly romantic. MRS HOLLINGSWORTH’S MEN is a remarkable achievement, full of style and feeling.
The Interrogative Mood
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?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 playful and profound response, a bebop solo of a book in which every sentence is a question. Perhaps only Powell a writer who was once touted as the best of his generation by Saul Bellow and ‘among the top five writers of fiction in the country’ by Barry Hannah could pull off such a remarkable stylistic feat. Is it a novel? Whatever it is, The Interrogative Mood is one of the most audacious literary high wire acts since Nicholson Baker’s The Mezzanine. Powell’s unnamed narrator forces us to consider our core beliefs, our most cherished memories, our views on life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In fiction as in life, there may be no easy answers but The Interrogative Mood is an exuberant book that leaves the reader feeling a little more alive.
Typical
Ida Fink’s first collection of stories, A Scrap of Time, was universally hailed as a masterpiece. Traces continues Fink’s portrait of life in Na*zi occupied Poland, of men and women otherwise buried in the anonymous statistics of war and genocide.
Aliens of Affection
Aliens of Affection marks new territory for Padgett Powell, picking up where his first collection of stories, Typical, left off. Although his characters continue to revolt against the received instructions of modern American livingrefusing to be dunked in what Saul Bellow has called the ‘marinade of correctness’their concerns are less for independence than for the maintenance of sanity itself. In this sometimes surrealistic terrain, ‘affection was that which, and the only thing on earth which, you should be eternally thankful for.’ Emotional estrangement seems both inevitable and worth fighting against to the middle aged hero*ine of O. Henry Award winner ‘Trick or Treat;’ to the unmistakably American roofer of ‘Wayne’ who was introduced in Typical; to the deserted husband, father, and non vet of ‘Dump;’ and to the fantastic heroes in three stories grouped as ‘All Along the Watchtower.’ The nine stories collected here are hilarious, wrenching, pessimistic, buoyant, low down, high strung, and impeccably written.
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