The Proust Questionnaire: Pico Iyer

The Proust Questionnaire is believed to reveal an individual’s true nature. We have asked Incite authors 17 questions inspired by the questionnaire in an attempt to uncover who they are…

 
What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Absorption. Whenever I’m lost in anything—a book, a conversation, a piece of music—and can’t even remember who I am, I know I must be in the right place, ecstatic. 

What does your ideal day look like?
More or less, the days I’ve crafted for myself in my home in rural Japan. I wake up, write, take long walks around the neighborhood, sit out on our tiny terrace in the sun, nibbling at sweet tangerines and reading long fiction, and then play furious games of ping-pong with the local grandmas (and sometimes their husbands) before spending the evening with my wife, after she’s back from work.

We have no car, no bicycle, no magazines or newspapers, no printer, no television I can understand and almost no Internet—only two small rooms in the whole place--and the day seems to last a thousand years.

What is your greatest extravagance?
Books.

What possession would you be heartbroken if you lost?
Self-possession.

If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
My over-ripe sense of duty.

What childhood fear has followed you into adulthood?
I’ve never been fond of crocodiles.

Do you take comfort in darkness or light?
I have such a love of light that I’ve worked really hard to try to look at the dark. I do believe that one can find light pretty much anywhere—especially in the dark—if one’s eyes are wide awake.

Do you remember your dreams?
I’ve recorded my dreams at times, as soon as I woke up (sometimes even before), but I found that doing so meant that I was too tired to record anything else the rest of the day. So now I let them just settle somewhere half-hidden beneath my other thoughts and color my writing invisibly.

How do you collect snippets of observations and ideas that come to you unexpectedly?
I have a wonderful piece of high-technology: a tiny notepad that fits in my pocket, and an aged Pilot black pen. Ever since I was eighteen or so, I’ve trained myself to scribble down every last thought or sentence that comes to me—because I know it will never come again.

What emotions do you experience when you sit down to begin a new work?
Exhilaration, tempered with a seasoned awareness that this is the closest I’ll ever get to the work I dreamed of. Partly because it will change in the doing—start making me rather than the other way round—and partly because no work begins to live up to the dream you have in your head.

What is your favorite way to avoid writing?
Napping, which is really writing in disguise.

Does being in love propel or postpone your work?
It propels, quickens and intensifies my work—gets me scribbling furiously, alive as I never am, able to see the secret patterning of the world as usually I can never do, unstoppably productive—but what it produces often makes no sense to others at all.

How do you work under pressure?
Best. When I began my writing life, I had to write 5000-word cover-stories for Time in a matter of hours, often, late at night. That said, now I mostly write for myself, I don’t look to adrenaline to drive me and often write my pieces months ahead of their deadlines. Pressure confers energy, but it doesn’t always bring depth.

What published book do you secretly wish you had written?
Mason & Dixon, but I only say that, of course, because I could never dream of having written a sentence of it. So maybe I should choose my private Bible, The Quiet American, which is all about being human, imperfect and not the person you dream of being.

Which historical figure do you most identify with?
Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Tell us one thing you can’t prove but believe is true.
A logic shapes and defines our lives, even if—especially if—it’s one we can’t discern.

Thank you to Dany Laferriere, CBC and Vanity Fair for the inspiration.