Marian Bantjes Answers The Proust Questionnaire—Book Edition
By Marian Bantjes November 12, 2013
This November marks the 100th anniversary of the publication of the first volume of Marcel Proust’s opus, In Search of Lost Time (A la recherche du temps perdu), originally known in English as Remembrance of Things Past. To honor the occasion, we developed the Designers & Books version of the eponymous Proust Questionnaire, which we’ve sent out to various contributors and friends. Rather than including the questions from the original that asked about a wide array of “thoughts and feelings,” our adaptation focuses solely on the respondent’s relationship to books.
View the complete questions asked in The Proust Questionnaire—Book Edition
Here are the answers Marian Bantjes sent in response to the Proust Questionnaire—Book Edition:
1. Of these, your reading preference: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama:
Fiction.
2. Your favorite childhood book (or favorite childhood author):
This is tough, but I will say The Phantom Tollbooth because it falls in the middle of my childhood, and I have reread it several times as an adult, and still own my original copy. Plus, it’s brilliant.
3. Your favorite book character:
Of all time?? There are so many ... I’m thinking of characters I fell in love with, and those I cried for, and those who became good friends over a series, and those I never wanted to leave and those who made me laugh and those who were just so quirky and interesting and strange ... I can’t possibly choose.
4. Your favorite book title (because you like the sound of it):
An Incredibly Sad, True Love Story.
5. A book you could never finish:
There are so many. The Bridges of Madison County was so abominably bad that I couldn’t bear it after three pages.
6. A book you will never start:
James Joyce’s Ulysses.
7. If for some reason it turned out that you could save one and only one book from among those you own, which would it be:
Mira calligraphiae monumenta.
8. A book you should have read but haven’t:
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez.
9. The best “book as object” you own (how it looks over what it says):
My own: I Wonder by Marian Bantjes.
10. Your reading speed: very slow; slow; moderate; fast; very fast
Probably moderate.
11. While you read, are you a note-taker? If yes, where do you record your notes:
No.
12. Your most idiosyncratic reading habit:
I often get horny when I read.
13. The most expensive book you’ve ever bought (and, if you can remember, the price:
Typefoundries in the Netherlands, from the Fifteenth to the Nineteenth Century: A History Based Mainly on Material in the Collection of Joh. From Enschede En Zonen at Haarlem for about $400.
14. If you could be any author:
Keith Richards.
17. The last book you bought:
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel.
18. Your favorite place to purchase books:
I’m so ashamed, but it is Amazon. I live on an island without a book store, and even if I lived in Vancouver, all my favorite book stores have gone.
19. The book(s) you are currently reading:
The World Without Us by Alan Weisman; A Paradise Built in Hell by Rebecca Solnit; Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel.
20. The book you will read next:
Unknown.
22. Your favorite format for books: paper or pixels
Paper!
Also see “Celebrating a Proust Anniversary with The Proust Questionnaire—Book Edition.”
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