The Proust Questionnaire

We recently completed an interesting exercise in my French class that I thought you might also enjoy. Marina, my teacher, asked us to respond to the questions in Proust’s questionnaire. According to a not-necessarily-reliable source, Marcel Proust (1871-1922), a French writer, didn’t actually come up with these questions. They were named after him simply because he provided interesting answers to them. Apparently answering questionnaires such as these was considered a party game in Marcel’s day (obviously this was before they invented spin-the-bottle), and young Marcel famously answered them when he was 13 and again when he was 20.

While our responses were perhaps less inspired than Proust’s, Marina asked us to present them to the class. Recognizing that the questions were a bit personal, she also gave us the option to imagine answers that someone else would provide. Well everyone in my class bravely presented their own responses to the questions, except me. Being socially limited from birth, I realized that I would squirm with discomfort if I had to perform such an intellectual strip tease in class, so instead I interviewed Marty. Yes, I shared Marty’s answers to the Proust questionnaire in class because I was too chicken to share my own. I am not proud of this, but I accept it as a necessary adaptation to my affliction.

Now before you go hollering that this is unfair play, you should know that I considered sharing my answers with the class, but I realized that I would censor my answers if I knew I was going to be presenting them in a public forum. I thought it was important to maintaining the purity of my responses to relieve myself from potential public exhibition. I know that I am making this sound like a more virtuous act than it was, but it’s my blog and I don’t have to describe myself as cowardly, gutless, spineless, or even pusillanimous, if I don’t want to. I do find the term lily-livered rather charming, however.

Marina was one of Marty’s teachers during his not-so-glorious French school career, and she is very fond of him. Despite her obvious affection for Marty, every time his name comes up she uses a French word that translates as “despair,” and talks about how every time he opened his mouth in French class, German came out. It would not be an exaggeration to say that one gets the impression that Marty’s failure in French is Marina’s largest professional regret. In any case, I was sure that at least Marina would be interested in Marty’s responses.

I also knew that Marty didn’t give a hoot if his responses were shared in class. While I asked him to confirm this, any of you who have ever spoken to Marty know that he will tell you anything and everything about his life. The term “open-book” seems rather inadequate to describe this tendency. Rather, the image of a billboard next to a major interstate comes to mind. Just to be clear, I rather admire this quality of Marty’s, although I obviously don’t share it. My sister Linda, who is even more socially retarded, oops, I mean “reserved,” than me, also finds him remarkable.

While I will leave it to Marty to share his answers with you, you can find Proust’s answers to the questions at this link. I highly recommend you answer the questions yourself before peeking at Proust’s responses. Marty and I spent a whole evening discussing our answers to these questions. Marina’s boyfriend, who apparently has a commendable sense of fairness, encouraged her to answer them before she assigned them to us. She reported that they also spent the entire evening discussing their responses. You may find them equally stimulating.

If you are interested in other people's responses, check out Vanity Fair. Since July 1993, Vanity Fair has been posing a version of these questions to celebrities, and their answers appear on the back cover of their publication (and on their web site) every month.

I didn’t want to rely on my own translations of the Proust questions, so I searched the web and found that there are many different versions of the Proust questions in English. I chose a set of questions that differed slightly from those Marina gave us, but that I thought were more interesting.

Here are the questions for you (from: http://www.angelfire.com/ms/chseng2/proust.html) :

What is your greatest fear?
What is your current state of mind?
What is your favorite occupation?(way of spending time)
What historical figure do you most identify with?
Which living person do you most admire?
Who is your favorite fictional hero?
Who are your real-life heroes?
What is your most treasured possession?
When and where were you happiest?
What is your most obvious characteristic?
What is the trait you most deplore (hate) in yourself?
What is the trait you most deplore in others?
What is your greatest extravagance?
What is your favorite journey?
What do you most dislike about your appearance?
What do you consider the most over-rated virtue?
On what occasion do you lie?
Which words or phrases do you most over-use?
If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Where would you like to live?
What is the quality you most admire in a man?
What is the quality you most admire in a woman?
What is it you most dislike?
What do you value most in your friends?
How would you like to die?
If you were to die and come back as a person or an animal, what do you think it would be?
If you could choose an object to come back as, what would you choose?
What is your motto (words you live by or that mean a lot to you)?
Who has been the greatest influence on you?

Keep in mind that these questions are actually much more interesting if you try to answer them than if you just read them. In other words, it's time for you to engage; no more lazy, browsing blog readers here. No siree - get those thinking caps on. Maybe they'll name the next set of questions after you.