{"id":50250,"date":"2026-09-30T15:34:43","date_gmt":"2026-09-30T15:34:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/david-bowie-answers-the-famous-proust-questionnaire\/"},"modified":"2026-09-30T15:34:43","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T15:34:43","slug":"david-bowie-answers-the-famous-proust-questionnaire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/david-bowie-answers-the-famous-proust-questionnaire\/","title":{"rendered":"David Bowie Answers the Famous Proust Questionnaire"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cQ: What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery? A: Living in fear.\u201d<\/h3>\n
\n

<\/a>In the 1880s, long before he claimed his status as one of the greatest authors of all time, teenage Marcel Proust<\/a> (July 10, 1871\u2013November 18, 1922) filled out an English-language questionnaire given to him by his friend Antoinette, the daughter of France\u2019s then-president, as part of her \u201cconfession album\u201d \u2014 a Victorian version of today\u2019s popular personality tests, designed to reveal the answerer\u2019s tastes, aspirations, and sensibility in a series of simple questions. Proust\u2019s original manuscript, titled \u201cby Marcel Proust himself,\u201d wasn\u2019t discovered until 1924, two years after his death. Decades later, the French television host Bernard Pivot, whose work inspired James Lipton\u2019s Inside the Actor\u2019s Studio<\/em>, saw in the questionnaire an excellent lubricant for his interviews and began administering it to his guests in the 1970s and 1980s. In 1993, Vanity Fair<\/em> resurrected the tradition and started publishing various public figures\u2019 answers to the Proust Questionnaire on the last page of each issue.<\/p>\n

In 2009, the magazine released Vanity Fair\u2019s Proust Questionnaire: 101 Luminaries Ponder Love, Death, Happiness, and the Meaning of Life<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (public library<\/em><\/a>) \u2014 a charming compendium featuring answers by such cultural icons as Jane Goodall<\/a>, Allen Ginsberg<\/a>, Hedy Lamarr<\/a>, Gore Vidal<\/a>, Julia Child<\/a>, and Joan Didion<\/a>. Among the most wonderful answers, equal parts playful and profound, are those by David Bowie<\/strong> \u2014 himself a vocal lover of literature<\/a> \u2014 published in the magazine in August of 1998.<\/p>\n

<\/a>
Portrait of David Bowie by Robert Risko for Vanity Fair<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n

What is your idea of perfect happiness?<\/em><\/strong>
\nReading.<\/p>\n

What is your most marked characteristic?<\/em><\/strong>
\nGetting a word in edgewise.<\/p>\n

What do you consider your greatest achievement?<\/em><\/strong>
\nDiscovering morning.<\/p>\n

What is your greatest fear?<\/em><\/strong>
\nConverting kilometers to miles.<\/p>\n

What historical figure do you most identify with?<\/em><\/strong>
\nSanta Claus.<\/p>\n

Which living person do you most admire?<\/em><\/strong>
\nElvis.<\/p>\n

Who are your heroes in real life?<\/em><\/strong>
\nThe consumer.<\/p>\n

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?<\/em><\/strong>
\nWhile in New York, tolerance.
\nOutside New York, intolerance.<\/p>\n

What is the trait you most deplore in others?<\/em><\/strong>
\nTalent.<\/p>\n

What is your favorite journey?<\/em><\/strong>
\nThe road of artistic excess.<\/p>\n

What do you consider the most overrated virtue?<\/em><\/strong>
\nSympathy and originality.<\/p>\n

Which word or phrases do you most overuse?<\/em><\/strong>
\n\u201cChthonic,\u201d \u201cmiasma.\u201d<\/p>\n

What is your greatest regret?<\/em><\/strong>
\nThat I never wore bellbottoms.<\/p>\n

What is your current state of mind?<\/em><\/strong>
\nPregnant.<\/p>\n

If you could change one thing about your family, what would it be?<\/em><\/strong>
\nMy fear of them (wife and son excluded).<\/p>\n

What is your most treasured possession?<\/em><\/strong>
\nA photograph held together by cellophane tape of Little Richard that I bought in 1958, and a pressed and dried chrysanthemum picked on my honeymoon in Kyoto.<\/p>\n

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?<\/em><\/strong>
\nLiving in fear.<\/p>\n

Where would you like to live?<\/em><\/strong>
\nNortheast Bali or south Java.<\/p>\n

What is your favorite occupation?<\/em><\/strong>
\nSquishing paint on a senseless canvas.<\/p>\n

What is the quality you most like in a man?<\/em><\/strong>
\nThe ability to return books.<\/p>\n

What is the quality you most like in a woman?<\/em><\/strong>
\nThe ability to burp on command.<\/p>\n

What are your favorite names?<\/em><\/strong>
\nSears & Roebuck.<\/p>\n

What is your motto?<\/em><\/strong>
\n\u201cWhat\u201d is<\/em> my motto.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Vanity Fair\u2019s Proust Questionnaire<\/em><\/strong><\/a> is a treat in its colorful totality. For a similar compendium of wisdom from cultural icons, see LIFE<\/em> Magazine\u2019s 1991 volume The Meaning of Life<\/em><\/a>, then revisit Bowie\u2019s 75 must-read books<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

donating = loving<\/h3>\n

For seventeen years, I have been spending hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars each month composing The Marginalian<\/em> (which bore the outgrown name Brain Pickings<\/em><\/a> for its first fifteen years). It has remained free and ad-free and alive thanks to patronage from readers. I have no staff, no interns, no assistant \u2014 a thoroughly one-woman labor of love that is also my life and my livelihood. If this labor makes your own life more livable in any way, please consider lending a helping hand with a donation<\/a>. Your support makes all the difference.<\/p>\n

\n

newsletter<\/h3>\n

The Marginalian<\/em> has a free weekly newsletter. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week\u2019s most inspiring reading. Here\u2019s what to expect<\/a>. Like? Sign up.<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cQ: What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery? A: Living in fear.\u201d In the 1880s, long before he claimed his status as one of the greatest authors of all time, teenage Marcel Proust (July 10, 1871\u2013November 18, 1922) filled out an English-language questionnaire given to him by his friend Antoinette, the daughter […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":50251,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-life"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-10-25 11:19:36","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50250\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}