The next - new - book of the popular Russian TV presenter is called “Posner about “Posner”.
“In connection with the fifth anniversary of the Posner program (we celebrated it in November 2013), it was decided to select about forty of the most interesting programs, transcribe them and provide my brief comments. I liked this proposal for several reasons. Firstly, I thought, that the reader will be interested (time will tell if I was wrong); secondly, I will say with some shame, this matter seemed very simple to me: what kind of problem is it to write a three-page commentary on my own interview? Oh, how wrong I was to write! comments turned out to be painfully difficult, and my promises to complete this work in six months were presumptuous and irresponsible,” writes Vladimir Pozner in the preface to the publication. And he points out that the idea to make such a book did not belong to him, but to an employee of the AST publishing house, who wished to remain anonymous.
During the existence of the Posner program, more than a hundred major people took part in it: directors, writers, politicians, actors, musicians. Vladimir Pozner selected the most interesting interviews, analyzed them and expressed his own attitude to the opinions of his interlocutors. In the book you can read conversations with Mikhail Gorbachev, Nikita Mikhalkov, Hillary Clinton, Alexander Gordon, Pavel Lungin, Anatoly Chubais and others. Why did the first president of the USSR want to send Boris Yeltsin to procure bananas? Why does Yuri Luzhkov consider the yard the best educator? What did Alexander Sokurov do to Rostropovich? When did Yegor Gaidar stop being a Soviet man? Why did Zhores Alferov lie on the tram tracks?
An RG columnist called Vladimir Vladimirovich and asked him about how he prepares for interviews in his programs.
“It’s obvious,” he replied, “my team and I determine who we will talk to and invite this person to the program.” If he agrees, then the team begins in relation to him what is called researching in English - research work. A lot of material is collected, then a selection is made, the results of which are sent to me. Usually this is about 35 - 40 articles. Of course, regardless of what is sent, I read and choose on my own. When everything has been studied, I create a conversation script.
The texts of each interview in the book, as well as in the program, include answers to the famous Marcel Proust questionnaire. And for the first time, Vladimir Pozner himself answered the same questions specifically for the book.
The book also contains the answers to the questionnaire that Proust himself gave when he was 20 years old. Since there was a lot of talk about the fact that there is no such questionnaire and Posner himself invented it, I explain that such a questionnaire existed. Moreover, it was precisely thanks to the unexpected, deep and intelligent answers of the famous French writer that it received the name “Proust Questionnaire,” explained Vladimir Vladimirovich. Subsequently, any set of similar questions was called the “Proust Questionnaire,” although they no longer had anything to do with Proust himself. After Proust, I myself answered the questions of his questionnaire - I thought it was funny.
In the 1880s, long before he became one of the greatest writers of his time, teenager Marcel Proust filled out an English-language questionnaire given to him by his friend Antoinette, the daughter of the then French president, as part of a game of “confession album,” a Victorian version of today's teenage questionnaires
Proust's manuscript was discovered in 1924, two years after his death. Decades later, in the 1970s and 1980s, French television presenter Bernard Pivot began using the questionnaire for his interviews. In 1993, Vanity Fair magazine revived the tradition and began publishing famous people's responses to the Proust Questionnaire on the back page of its issues.
In 2009, the magazine published the Vanity Fair Proust Questionnaire, which featured survey responses from legends such as Jane Goodall, Allen Ginsberg, Gore Vidal and Joan Didion. Among the most interesting responses were those of David Bowie, a great lover of literature, published in the magazine in August 1998.
How do you see complete happiness for yourself?
What is your most distinctive feature?
The ability to get a word in.
What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Understanding the morning.
What are you most afraid of?
Convert kilometers to miles.
What historical figure do you identify with?
With Santa Claus.
Which living person do you most admire?
Who is your hero in real life?
Consumer.
What trait do you most dislike in yourself?
When I'm in New York - tolerance. Outside of New York there is intolerance.
What trait do you most dislike in others?
What's your favorite trip?
The path of artistic excess.
What do you think is the most overrated virtue?
Kindness and originality.
What words or phrases do you most often overuse?
"Chthonic", "miasma".
What do you regret most?
About how he never wore bell-bottoms.
What is your state of mind now?
I'm carrying it.
If you could change anything about your family, what would it be?
My fear is of them (with the exception of my wife and son).
What is your most valuable possession?
A shrink-wrapped photograph of Little Richard that I bought in 1958, and a dried chrysanthemum picked on my honeymoon in Kyoto.
What do you consider the abyss of misfortune?
Living in fear.
Where would you like to live?
In northeast Bali or south Java.
What is your favorite activity?
Squish paint on an insensitive canvas.
What qualities do you like most in men?
Ability to return books.
What qualities do you like most in women?
Ability to burp on command.
What are your favorite names?
Sears & Roebuck (Sears, Roebuck and Company is an American company that operates several international retail chains, founded by Richard Sears and Alva Roebuck. - Note ed.)
What is your motto?
“What” is my motto.
I learned about the existence of this questionnaire only, alas, just a few years ago from Posner’s program, who each time ends his program with it, for some reason persistently calling Proust his short acquaintance and great friend - although, of course, he has the right to be considered a friend of everyone. How Proust himself would have looked at this is still unknown :) Posner arranges questions, apparently based on the personality of the interlocutor? Wikipedia states that there are two versions of the Proust Questionnaire. These are questionnaires compiled in 1886 and 1891. - neither one nor the other actually belongs to Proust - they began to be called by his name only because of his witty answers. I will give here the first (short) version of the questionnaire with my answers. Perhaps some of the readers will also be interested in filling out this questionnaire in the comments.
Questionnaire No. 1
What virtues do you value most?
Honesty, generosity, mercy.
Qualities that you value most in a man?
Generosity, gratitude, wit.
Qualities that you value most in a woman?
Kindness, femininity, fidelity.
What is your main trait?
Susceptibility
What is your idea of happiness?
Happiness is when God kisses you.
Your idea of unhappiness?
When you give up and despondency takes over
What is your favorite color and flower?
Favorite colors: black and red. Favorite flower is rose.
If not yourself, then who would you like to be?
Perhaps Johann Wolfgang Goethe :)
Where would you like to live?
I am too Russian to the core to feel comfortable in another country. But among foreign countries, I especially like France, although I have not been there :)
Who are your favorite writers?
Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Gogol
Who are your favorite poets?
Pushkin, Blok, Shakespeare, Daniil Andreev, Arseny Tarkovsky.
Who are your favorite artists and composers?
Among the artists - Leonardo, Bosch, W. Blake. I don’t dare to single out any composers.
What vices do you feel most indulgent towards?
To vices that do not involve violence against another person.
What are your favorite literary characters?
Don Quixote, Faust, Rabelais' heroes, Lucius in Apuleius's "The Golden Ass", Chichikov.
Who are your favorite heroes in real life?
Mahatma Gandhi, Napoleon, Caesar.
Who are your favorite heroines in real life?
Hypatia of Alexandria, Tatiana Kasatkina.
Who are your favorite literary female characters?
Margarita from the novel by M. Bulgakov
What is your favorite dish or drink?
Good fried or baked meat with vegetables and dry red wine - a must in good and small company!
What are your favorite names?
From the men: Nikolai, Alexey, Alexander. From women: Elena, Tatyana, Maria.
What are you disgusted by?
To fanaticism in any form; to condemn other people based on sanctimonious morality; to the base instincts of the crowd; to the violence of the strong over the weak; to the persecution of a person by jackals; to groveling before those in power; and a lot more.
Which historical figures cause your greatest antipathy?
Stalin, tyrants of all stripes.
What is your current state of mind?
It’s complex and multidimensional, but I try to look into the future with optimism.
What is your favorite saying?
“I don’t care what you think about me - I don’t think about you at all” (Coco Chanel), “Eyes and ears are bad witnesses for those who have a barbaric soul” (Heraclitus), “If you want to know a person, don’t listen what others say about him, better listen to what he says about others" (I don’t know who the author is).
I did the work: I studied the different versions of Marcel Proust’s questionnaire that I found or those passed off as him or built on its basis (including the questionnaire used by Posner in his Monday broadcast), compiled a consolidated questionnaire, added logically missing questions to it (if any question about a favorite bird, logically there should be a question about a favorite animal), and also allowed myself to add a few questions that arise logically and philosophy of this questionnaire and distribute all the questions according to their internal logic and topics.
In total there were exactly 50 questions, which I am publishing in anticipation of your answers, ladies and gentlemen!
Highlighted in red most popular questions, lilac - controversial or supplemented, blue - rare. If anyone wishes, he can respond selectively, only to red ones or excluding lilac ones.
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1. What is your favorite activity?
2. What is your least favorite activity?
3. What do you love most?
4. What do you hate most?
5. What do you dream about?
6. What are you afraid of?
7. What is your main character trait?
8. What is your main weakness?
9. What is your main strength?
10. What natural quality (talent, ability) would you like to have?
11. By whom and hknown to you people Would you like to be (visit)?
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12. What quality do you value most in men?
13. What quality do you value most in women?
14. What What do you value most about your friends?
15. Favorite heroes in (modern) real life?
16. P achievement that made a lasting impression on you?
17. Who is your favorite historical figure?
18. Historian ic character you despise most?
19. Which human virtues are most attractive to you?
20. O mistakes, weaknesses, misdeeds that cause you the greatest leniency?
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21. B your dream of happiness? What is the highest happiness for you?
22. What would be your greatest misfortune?
23. The most severe test to which need exposes us?
24. What is your ideal of earthly paradise?
25. Which country would you like to live in?
26. Which country would you like to visit?
27. What is your favorite color? Why?
28. What is your favorite sound?
29. What is your favorite smell?
30. What is your favorite taste?
31. What is your favorite feeling?
32. What needs to be done to ensure that you have the oil to your heart’s content?
33. B your favorite bird?
34. What is your favorite animal?
35. What is your favorite subject?
36. Who did you love most in this life?
37. Three objects that you would take to the ends of the universe if you couldn’t take anything else?
38. Name three people, real or fictitious, with whom you would go to the edge of the universe, on reconnaissance, in battle?
39. Who is your favorite poet?
40. Who is your favorite writer?
41. Who is your favorite artist?
42. Who is your favorite composer?
43. What work of art, literature, or science would you first introduce an alien to?
44. Three books that you would definitely save at the end of the world?
45. Three works of art, which ones would you save?
46. Three last wishes at the end of the world?
47. What will you ask God when you die?
48. State of mind at the moment?
49. How would you like to die?
50. What is your life motto?
Now in 2017, the full-fledged “masters” of the Internet, in my opinion, are children and teenagers of the 90s. That is, those who are now approximately 25 to 40 years old.
Memories of the peculiarities of life in the 90s: toys, rituals, hobbies, everyday life and the indispensable reminder to children and teenagers of the present time that “they do not know life, with with their computers, iPhones, iPads, YouTube..."
I decided to remind you of one feature of our childhood - the questionnaire.
For those who don’t know, a questionnaire is a squared notebook, usually 48 or 96 sheets long, with a lot of personal questions to fill out. It was created most often by girls, and receiving such a profile was an act of a kind of recognition and interest in you. This is a 100% analogue of social networks in a world where the Internet was just beginning to develop.
Now many people think (and I thought so) that questionnaires are a 100% phenomenon of the 90s. In reality this is not the case. Even the youth of the 19th century had fun filling out questionnaires. They were called: “Album for recording thoughts, feelings, etc.”, which has come down to our time under the name “Marcel Proust Questionnaire”, “Proust Questionnaire”, because it is believed that this French writer filled it out very creatively and originally.
I won't publish his answers here so as not to confuse you. I suggest taking a piece of paper, writing a question, then an answer, writing the date and your age on it, and saving the piece of paper so that later years later you can go through this questionnaire again and compare how the answers have changed. You can immediately analyze them, it is much easier when the answers and questions are in front of you. Or you can conduct a survey with a person you are interested in, this way you will get to know each other better, plus this is quite an interesting activity.
Here's what you need to answer:
- What is your most characteristic feature?
- Qualities that you value most in a man?
- Qualities that you value most in a woman?
- What do you value most in your friends?
- What is your main weakness?
- What is your favorite activity?
- What is your dream of happiness?
- What do you consider the biggest misfortune?
- What kind of person would you like to be?
- What country would you like to live in?
- What's your favorite color?
- What is your favorite flower?
- What is your favorite bird?
- Who are your favorite writers?
- Who are your favorite poets?
- Favorite literary character?
- Favorite literary heroines?
- Favorite composers?
- Favorite artists?
- Favorite heroes in real life?
- Favorite heroine in history?
- Favorite names?
- What do you hate most?
- Historical figures you despise?
- What moment in military history do you value most?
- Reform that you value most highly?
- An ability you wish you had?
- How would you like to die?
- What is your current state of mind?
- What vices do you feel most indulgent towards?
- What is your motto?