Padgett Powell has written some of the most lyrical and hilarious stories to emerge from the Southern literary tradition, and his characters are some of its rowdiest and most unforgettable. Powell embraces the stereotypical pickup trucks, cheap booze, and Piggly Wigglys that crowd the genre with an irascible, pessimist’s wit, proving what a wonderful and silly thing it is to be Southern, and, ultimately, human. In a story titled “Typical,” his character John Payne examines the circumstances that led him to realize he is “a piece of shit.” In another, “Scarliotti and the Sinkhole,” a brain-damaged man in a trailer perched atop a sinkhole watches The Andy Griffith Show, avoids his medication, and wonders what life will be like when his trailer finally goes underground (“The sinkhole was the kind of thing he realized that other people had when they had Jesus. He didn’t need Jesus. He had a hole, and it was a purer thing than a man”).

A student of Donald Barthelme, Powell first rose to national attention with his debut novel, Edisto (1984), the story of ten-year-old Simons Manigault and his wild adolescence in coastal South Carolina. It was nominated for the American Book Award for best first novel. Soon after, he began teaching at the University of Florida in his hometown of Gainesville, where he now serves as director of the MFA program. He has written three novels in addition to Edisto—A Woman Named Drown, Mrs. Hollingsworth’s Men, Edisto Revisited—as well as two collections of short fiction, Typical and Aliens of Affection.

This conversation took place over a three-month span. Powell preferred that the interview take place via email because, in his words: “I rather despise the phone. Poets like the phone.”

—Brian J. Barr

I. “WHAT IS ONE DOING IN A CLASSROOM FINALLY BUT PEDDLING HIS BIASES?”

THE BELIEVER: A line from your short story “Chihuahua” won’t leave my head. Your character says: “A man is supposed to be a kind of diversified portfolio of modest interest in things, none of which is to get out of hand.” Obviously this was meant in jest by you as the writer, considering the character was undergoing psychiatric treatment for “winder-peekin.” But I’m curious—do you feel our society places too much emphasis on turning us into well-rounded people?

PADGETT POWELL: I think the pique I feel hasn’t to do with well-roundedness, per se, which after all might make little Renaissance men of us, or at least a good Boy Scout. “Diversified portfolio” refers more to custodialism in life, which has irked me to no end....