From Vanity Fair:
"First, the Proust questionnaire was dreamed up neither by Vanity Fair nor indeed by Proust. In fact, it was a Parisian parlor game among the novelist's bourgeois crowd, and it is believed to have been popularized by the daughter of the 19th-century French president Felix Faure. "Antoinette Faure's Album"--a red leather journal adorned with an ornate, blind-embossed trellis--contained entries from many in Faure's social circle. She would invite friends over for tea and then ask each an identical sequence of questions: "what is your favorite virtue?... Your idea of misery?... Your present state of mind?," and so forth. They would all answer, in long hand, in her little red book.
Proust, who twice filled out Faure's form with precocious gusto,--at ages 14 and 20--subsequently published his answers as "Salon Confidences Written By Marcel," in an 1892 article in La Revue Illustree XV. His name would become associated with the questionnaire posthumously..."
This could well be one of the earliest forms of what we know today as the meme. Imagine having to invite friends over and prepare lunch, or snacks for them just so they could answer your meme. Buti na lang may internet na ngayon. =D
Some interesting answers I read in the mag today:
DORIS DAY, actress, My greatest regret: "Most of my marriages." (April 1995)
GORE VIDAL, writer, My greatest fear: "Elevation to the papacy." (October, 1994)
DAVID BOWIE, musician, My greatest fear: "Converting kilometers to miles." (August, 1998)
FRAN LEBOWITZ, writer, humorist and social critic, How would you like to die: "Vindicated." (November, 1994)
For the questionnaire, go to vanityfair.com
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