The Audacity of Answering My Own Proust Questionnaire

An experiment in narcissism, honesty, and existential oversharing

Remember when there used to be actual magazines? I devoured them. Highbrow and lowbrow. Glossy fashion tomes, gossip rags from the grocery store checkout aisle. The New Yorker. (It used to stress me out because it arrived every week and piled up faster than I could keep up. Mostly I read Shouts & Murmurs and the movie reviews.) I also adored Vanity Fair—especially for the Proust Questionnaire at the back.

It’s a set of 34 questions designed to reveal the personality, values, tastes, and inner life of the person answering them. It began as a Victorian-era parlor game and supposedly became famous after Marcel Proust answered his own version several times as a young man. Eventually, Vanity Fair turned it into a literary tradition, asking the same questions of writers, artists, actors, and politicians.

The list of people who have taken it is a cultural who’s who: David Bowie, Joan Didion, Gore Vidal, Salman Rushdie, Patti Smith, and so many others have subjected themselves to this little psychological excavation.

The appeal, I think, is that the questions are less about facts than fragments. What do you fear? What do you love? What do you admire? What do you regret?

Which brings me to the question: Who in their right mind answers their own Proust Questionnaire?

Me, naturally.

It might seem narcissistic. There is something ridiculous about “interviewing” yourself. Then again, why should famous people have all the fun? I’d argue it’s even more interesting when the subject isn’t famous. I’d rather know what keeps my neighbors awake at night. Also I’m absolutely obsessed with lists and personality tests.

So I just had to answer it the other day, when once again my elevated cortisol levels or whatever kept me up at 3 a.m.

The first question asks about your greatest fear. I decided not to answer that one—not because I don’t know the answer. I do. But I have a superstitious streak, and saying certain fears out loud feels like tempting fate in a self-fulfilling-prophecy kind of way.

The question about the trait I most deplore in myself was easier. Well, not easier exactly. There are sooo many options. I settled on ennui—the French word for a peculiar kind of existential boredom. I sometimes think I was born with it. Not arriving in the world screaming like a normal infant, but looking around like: la-di-da, what’s all the fuss about?

My greatest achievement?

Staying alive.

I hesitated before writing that because it sounds overly dramatic. Surely I should have chosen something more presentable: raising my son, publishing a book, building a “career.” But then again, none of those things would have happened if I had failed at the first one.

Some questions simply refused to cooperate, such as Who are your favorite writers?

Impossible. After decades of reading, how does one choose? Writers aren’t competitors. They are companions. They arrive when you need them and quietly leave again. I could give the intimidating literary answer and name someone like David Foster Wallace. I did enjoy approximately 20 percent of Infinite Jest. My fantasy is to edit it down to the brilliant parts and throw away everything that makes you wonder if Wallace secretly hated his readers.

My favorite writers belong to different eras of my life. As a child, I devoured Stephen King—not because I loved horror, but because he was such a fantastic chronicler of America. As a teenager, I discovered Bukowski. My twenties belonged to Anaïs Nin, Henry Miller, Ernest Hemingway, Milan Kundera, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. In college, I found André Gide and Boris Vian.

But I’ve never been loyal to one literary neighborhood. I’ve read everyone, including the writers people feel obligated to confess they enjoy: Joan Collins, Jacqueline Susann, V.C. Andrews, Jackie Collins.

I refuse to apologize for the pleasures of a good scandal, a sexy plot twist, or a woman in a fab dress making terrible choices. Someone can read Proust and Valley of the Dolls. These things are not mutually exclusive.

But I digress.

The question about a living person I admire also stopped me. I couldn’t think of one definitive answer. Maybe Brian Cox. Maybe Michelle Obama. Maybe someone I’ve never heard of such as someone who quietly keeps going despite impossible odds. Maybe admiration says less about the person being admired than about the qualities we are trying to cultivate ourselves.

The questionnaire asks how I would like to die.

My answer:

By choice in Switzerland.

My grandmother had a similar plan when she was approaching triple digits, but even at that age, life proved stubborn.

The remaining questions were a strange little archaeological dig through my personality. The historical figure I most identify with? Hmmmhhh…. Simone de Beauvoir? Maybe Joan of Arc. Maybe the Blood Countess. (A concerning trio, perhaps.) My favorite names? Nico, Vida, Gala, Alistair, Milosz.

My hero of fiction? Alice in Wonderland. Who wouldn’t want to fall down a rabbit hole and discover an alternate universe where everything is strange and nothing makes sense? And finally:

What is your motto?

Après moi, le déluge.

If you’ve never answered the Proust Questionnaire yourself, I recommend it. Not because anyone else needs to read it. The world is already overflowing with people explaining themselves.

But because there is something strangely revealing about discovering which answers arrive instantly—and which ones make you pause, dig through the archives of your mind, and wonder who exactly has been living in there all along.

Also, it’s fun to do.