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54th out of 114 books
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Vanity Fair's Proust Questionnaire: 101 Luminaries Ponder Love, Death, Happiness, and the Meaning of Life
by
Graydon Carter,
Risko
An intimate look into the inner lives of our most prominent cultural figures— pulled from the celebrated Proust Questionnaire page in Vanity Fair magazine. The probing set of questions originated as a 19th-century parlor game popularized by contemporaries of Marcel Proust, the French essayist and novelist, who believed that an individual’s answers reveal his true natu...more
Hardcover, 224 pages
Published
October 13th 2009
by Rodale Books
(first published 2009)
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Big surprise here: celebs and scribblers and designers are just as dull as you and me. The Proust questionnaire is really a buncha basic questions beloved by snobs because Marcel Proust answered them (did not come up with them) when he was a teenager. Hell, even the Cookie Monster answered the questionnaire for NPR, can you get any more hipster-highbrow than that?
I'd love to detail the creepy hilarity that ensues when public figures answer an introspective quiz for public consumption,...more
I'd love to detail the creepy hilarity that ensues when public figures answer an introspective quiz for public consumption,...more
My wife dragged me to Anthropologie (man, what a horrible place) and they had this book on sale. I read the entire thing over the course of my wife's shopping excursion (which wasn't very long). It's a fun little book, nothing shocking or groundbreaking. Most of the interview answers are boring and conventional, with a few exceptions. I thought Arnold Schwarzenegger gave the funniest responses. Margaret Atwood, unsurprisingly, sounds like a self-righteous numbskull. Martin Scorsese owns a ...more
Ho-hum. I was hoping that because this questionnaire was popularized by Proust, there would be some really interesting questions answered by some really intellectual and inspiring people. No such luck. Since the questionnaire was reintroduced by Vanity Fair the roster of names is made up mostly of pop-culture icons. Just because someone is famous doesn’t mean they’re interesting. In fact, for the most part they're just as boring as the rest of us.
Question: If you could give the...more
Question: If you could give the...more
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Robin
rated it
Recommends it for:
those who like reading pitty comments by celebs
Recommended to Robin by:
read a review...somewhere
Shelves:
2009-list,
life-lessons
This is a great gift for anyone who likes to read what celebs have on their minds. This is a better coffee table book than something with photos or illustrations because it can be enjoyed on so many levels. I read most of it in the car on the way to NY for Thanksgiving and it's the type of book that you can read pieces of it to the driver of the car without getting him distracted which worked well. A lot of fun.
I took the questionnaire on Vanity Fair's website.
I answered 95.18% like Little Richard. What? haha... But second was Jane Goodall at 75.33%
http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/featur...
I answered 95.18% like Little Richard. What? haha... But second was Jane Goodall at 75.33%
http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/featur...
Great book. I would've given it 5 stars but the illustrations suck, like really bad computer generated drawings. The interviewees all deserve 5 stars though.
Fun book - good gift book, coffee table book, or bathroom read. Some hilarious celeb one-line zingers and the artwork is great.
Loved this read!!! It was great, I highly recommend it as a coctail table book because everyone will enjoy it.
Read this in an hour, so I'm glad I didn't pay for it. More entertaining in small doses.
Interesting, illuminating, but not that awesome. Read in a day.
Heidi
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Rian gave this to me for our one year anniversary.
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Edward Graydon Carter is a Canadian-born American journalist and author. He is editor of Vanity Fair. He also co-founded, with Kurt Andersen and Tom Phillips, the satirical monthly magazine Spy in 1986.
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