LE PORTRAIT MAGAZINE MARCH-SEPTEMBER ISSUE | Page 16

sense of intense ownership and kinship readers felt with Thomas’ work.
They came into his world and felt like it was their own.

Cries for Help, Various by Padgett Powell
Padgett Powell is one of the true originals of American fiction, and his
weird and humorous writings constantly find new ways to shape fiction.
His most recent novel, You and Me, was composed entirely of dialogue
between two characters sitting on a porch, and the novel before
that, The Interrogative Mood, was composed entirely of questions. His
collection of forty-four short stories–“forty-four failed novels,” Powell
has called them–is the prefect introduction to his linguistic dexterity and
try-anything style.

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