Proust Questionnaire with Paul Theroux
Your favorite virtue. Generosity
Your favorite qualities in a man. That he is witty, reliable, good hearted, confident
Your favorite qualities in a woman. That she is witty, reliable, good hearted, confident
Your chief characteristic.Watchfulness
What you appreciate the most in your friends. Kindness
Your main fault. I tend to over explain, assuming that people seldom listen
Your favorite occupation.Writing
Your idea of happiness. Heading down the open road to a place I’ve never been
Your idea of misery. The human voice, endlessly chuntering, at an unwelcome time
If not yourself, who would you be? A designated hitter on a winning baseball team
Where would you like to live? Where I live now, Hawaii and Cape Cod
Your favorite color and flower. Green, Asiatic Day Lilies
Your favorite prose authors. Far too many to mention in this short space – perhaps fifty of them
Your favorite poets. John Donne, Wallace Stevens, Emily Dickinson, Dylan Thomas, Thomas Browne (Urn Burial), Charles Baudelaire, Philip Larkin and many others
Your favorite heroes in fiction. Huck Finn, Captain Ahab, Mr Kurtz (Heart Of Darkness), Mohun Biswas (A House For Mr Biswas0 Charles Pooter (Diary Of A Nobody), Tolstoy’s Ivan Illych, and many others
Your favorite heroines in fiction. Fanny Hill, Ellen Roxburgh (In Patrick White’s Fringe of Leaves), Mattie Ross (In True Grit), Emma Bovary, Anna Karenina, Lolita
Your favorite painters and composers. J M W Turner, Stanley Spencer, Francis Bacon, Paul Gauguin, H Bosch, J E Liotard
Composers: Mozart, Philip Glass, Bob Dylan, Chuck Berry, J S Bach
Leisure Pleasures
Movies
Godfather, Part 1 & 2
This is Spinal Tap
Goodfellas
The Revenant
Breathless with Jean-Paul Belmondo
The Big Lebowski
Fargo
Escapes
Maine
Into a small boat
Into a book
Into a long walk
Oaxaca
Books for travel, art, discovery
Art: Looking At Pictures by Sir Kenneth Clark
Travel: The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard
Discovery: Che Guevara by Jon Lee Anderson
Actors
Marlon Brando
Sean Penn
Michelle Pfeiffer
Rachel McAdam
Authors
Haruki Murakami
Jonathan Raban
Emily Praeger
Museums
Chicago Art Institute
Tate Gallery, London
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
The Farnsworth, Maine
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston