Rudy VanderLans Answers The Proust Questionnaire Book Edition
By Rudy VanderLans December 6, 2013
This November marked 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 Rudy VanderLans sent in response to the Proust Questionnaire—Book Edition:
1. Of these, your reading preference: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama:
All, in that order.
2. Your favorite childhood book (or favorite childhood author):
Hergé.
3. Your favorite book character:
Charles Bukowski’s Henry Chinaski.
5. A book you could never finish:
You Can’t Go Home Again by Thomas Wolfe.
8. A book you should have read but haven’t:
Too many to list.
9. The best “book as object” you own (how it looks over what it says):
Every Building on the Sunset Strip by Edward Ruscha.
10. Your reading speed: very slow, slow, moderate, fast, very fast:
Moderate.
11. While you read, are you a note-taker?
No.
16. Your favorite writer of the gender opposite yours:
Joan Didion.
17. The last book you bought:
The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane.
18. Your favorite place to purchase books:
Moe’s Bookstore, Berkeley, CA.
19. The book you are currently reading:
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami.
20. The book you will read next:
1491 by Charles C. Mann.
21. The current location of the book you will read next:
Moe’s Bookstore.
22. Your favorite format for books: paper or pixels:
Paper.
24. A book that was particularly meaningful to, or highly recommended by, an acquaintance of yours:
The Lanny Budd Series by Upton Sinclair.
View all Questionnaires.
Also see “Celebrating a Proust Anniversary with The Proust Questionnaire—Book Edition.”
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