The Proust Questionnaire has its origins in a parlor game popularized (though not originally devised) by Marcel Proust, the French essayist and novelist, who believed that, in answering these questions, an individual reveals his or her true nature.
As part of the SAFN Video Archive: The Development of Food Anthropology, we are producing a series of questionnaires with the participants. Here are responses from Dr. Richard Wilk (left).
What is your favorite virtue? Empathy
What are your favorite qualities in a man? Intelligence, Wit & Humility
What are your favorite qualities in a woman? Intelligence, Wit & Humility
What do you think is your chief characteristic?
Omnivorousness & Curiosity– intellectual and gustatory
What quality do you appreciate the most in your friends? Fun, depth, diversity
What do you consider your main fault? Easily distracted, talking instead of listening, weakness for donuts
What is your favorite occupation? Husband/father, writer, public speaker
What is your idea of happiness? The ocean, dinner with friends and family, dachshunds
What is your idea of misery? Fast food and slow lectures, being told stuff I already know, senility
If you could die and come back as another person or living being, what would you choose? an Orca
Where would you like to live? I would rather be peripatetic.
Who are your favorite prose authors? Ursula Le Guin, Iain Banks, Richard Koster
Who are your favorite poets? Garcia Lorca, B.B. King, Monty Python
Who are your favorite heroes/heroines of fiction? Arya Stark, Stephen Maturin, Good Soldier Schweik
Who are your favorite anthropologists? Anne Pyburn, Sidney Mintz, Michael Jackson, Orvar Lofgren, Zora Neale Hurston
Click here for the hour-long Richard Wilk interview. Click here for Richard Wilk’s author page.
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