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
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 stuff animals I find; I do roadkill. They're strangely fun to have. They're like easy-to-control pets.
I don't write anything if I'm not agreeable and liking it. I'm not one of these slavers who wads up paper. It comes or it doesn't.
I associate the truest spirit of Christmas with certain years when I had to spend it at my parents' house as an adult who had, presumably, escaped.
I am writing a book more improbable than 'The Interrogative Mood' that I call 'Manifesto'. It's two guys talking who speak artificially conveniently.
Bermuda is not even tropical. The charm of the tropics - the heat, the chaos - is not there.
Many parks in Florida have information kiosks with colorful enamel signs showing the special flora and fauna in the park. The gopher tortoise, the scrub jay, the indigo snake. At no park with an indigo snake on its kiosk signs could I find an indigo.
I know about the sweet home. I went to school with 'em boys, what became Lynyrd Skynyrd; I knew Allen Collins, the skinny girl-beautiful guitarist. I put Allen Collins in every travel piece I do. Travel writing is harrowing, going to Bermuda with a banjo on my knee.
Travel writing is harrowing. You are in paradise, more or less, having to prove it is paradise. It is hard to have a good time trying to figure out a way to say you are having a good time, whether you are having it or not, even in paradise.
Military brats have this toughness: they're almost like orphans or foster children; they develop little mechanisms. It sets you up to look at things a little differently.
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.
If I slip up and receive a good gift, I will not have given a good gift. This is probably a natural law that affects us all and needs a name. The Gift Reciprocal Law.
That's part of fiction, creating a world better than the one you live in.
Heavy booze is a big time vacation, but you come back with a headache.