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Cannell Agency Cynthia Cannell

INDIGO

Padgett Powell

Arm Wrestling, Snake Saving, and Some Things in Between

The first collection of nonfiction by "one of the few truly important American writers of our time" (Sam Lipsyte).

Gathering pieces written during the past three decades, Indigo ranges widely in subject matter and tone, opening with "Cleve Dean," which takes Padgett Powell to Sweden for the World Armwrestling Federation Championships, through to its closing title piece, which charts Powell's lifelong fascination with the endangered indigo snake, "a thinking snake," and his obsession with seeing one in the wild. "Some things in between" include an autobiographical piece about growing up in the segregated and newly integrated South and tributes to writers Powell has known, among them Donald Barthelme, who "changed the aesthetic of short fiction in America for the second half of the twentieth century," and Peter Taylor, who briefly lived in Gainesville, Florida, where Powell taught for thirty-five years. There are also homages to other admired writers: Flannery O'Connor, "the goddesshead"; Denis Johnson, with his "hard honest comedy"; and William Trevor, whose Collected Stories provides "the most literary bang for the buck in the English world." A throughline in many of the pieces is the American South - the college teacher who introduced Powell to Faulkner; the city of New Orleans, which "can render the improbable possible"; and the seductions of gumbo, sometimes cooked with squirrel meat. Also here is an elegy for Spode, Powell's beloved pit bull: "I had a dog not afraid, it gave me great cheer and blustery vicarious happiness." In addressing the craft of fiction, Powell ventures that "writing is controlled whimsy." His idiosyncratic playfulness brings this collection to vivid life, while his boundless curiosity and respect for the truth keep it on course. As Pete Dexter writes in his foreword to Indigo, "He is still the best, even if not the best-known, writer of his generation." Padgett Powell is the author of six novels (including The Interrogative Mood, You & Me, and Edisto, a finalist for the National Book Award) and three story collections. His writing has appeared in the New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, Little Star, and the Paris Review, and he is the recipient of the Rome Fellowship in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Whiting Writers' Award, and the James Tait Black Prize in fiction, the UK's oldest literary award.

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Book Published 2021-11-09 by Catapult

Comments

Memorable reflections on writing and life from an author who pulls no punches.

Indigo is a great book, ecstatically written: all at once an ars poetica, memento mori, and self-portrait in a convex mirror.

INDIGO is one of Publishers Weekly's Top 10 "Fall 2021 Announcements: Essays & Literary Criticism" Kirkus's "150 Most Anticipated Fall Books" and "11 Nonfiction Books To Read This Fall" Lit Hub's "Most Anticipated Books of 2021" and "19 new books to get at your local indie this week"

rave in the NYTimes! - Padgett Powell Goes Snake Chasing Read more...

Fans of Padgett Powell's fiction expect to find in Indigo, his first collection of nonfiction, quirky characters and inimitable prose, and they won't be disappointed. Another set of readers, unfamiliar with Powell's catalogue but drawn to this book by ecstatic reviews and superlative blurbage... have a treat in store.

Powell seems to me...a champion in the shadows, a rare creature, a delicious hybrid--and a major American writer... The volume's 18 essays span four decades and are unified by his unmistakable voice, which in turn makes Indigo of a piece with his works of fiction... The prose keeps you going through the pages of Indigo, whatever the subject matter... Thank you, Padgett Powell.

Indigo, like all Powell's writing, has a kind of radiance, wild joy, and cantankerous sympathy. In the firmament of modern writing, he's in his own constellation.

[A] winning collection of essays... With infectious curiosity and sympathy, Powell covers literature, sports, and the American South... Powell's prose is razor-sharp, and locales such as New Orleans and Bermuda come alive through his shrewd eye and distinctive storytelling. His insightful observations on the craft and teaching of writing are a bonus. This will delight Powell's fans and should gain him some new ones, too.

Indigo is an excellent book, which I loved. Apart from the expected Padgett Powell things - acuity, comedy, sudden 3D-image-infliction - it develops the character of the essayist over the course of all the pieces in a way that's not un-novel-like.

Padgett Powell is a cantankerous delight who is unafraid to write exactly what he sees, and if he can't quite see it, he'll do whatever it takes to get a view. This collection of his nonfiction observations spans three decades of that looking and comes as advertised: Powell travels to Sweden for the world arm wrestling championships, searches for the endangered indigo snake in the wild, reflects on the importance of squirrel meat in a good gumbo, and delivers his honest opinions about writers like Denis Johnson, Flannery O'Connor, and William Trevor.

Powell is far too good, far too stylish, far too wacky, and certainly far too American to have achieved anything but cult status. But his 10 books, written in his idiosyncratic style, a hysterical Southern gothic mashup of pathos and hijinks, are singular literary creations and the work of a beautiful weirdo the likes of which are nearly an extinct species in the literary world... It's hard to imagine anything with less potential for virality than gumbo or a squirrel, but in the hands of a master like Powell, these trivialities are elevated to the transcendent.