Clinton
1. What is your current state of mind? Ready for what’s next.
2. Who is your favorite fictional hero? Tintin. It doesn’t get much better than a French-speaking reporter-adventurer.
3. What is the last book you read? A Home at the End of the World, by Michael Cunningham
4. What do you consider the most overrated virtue? Piety.
5. What is your greatest extravagance?
I once bought a $100 dollar tie for a job interview. 
I still have the tie.  I do not have the job.
6. What living person do you most despise?Clinton
7. If you could choose to come back as something what would it be? A very tall building.
8. On what occasion do you lie? When answering questionnaires.
9. What is your greatest regret? In college, my eccentric earth science professor announced to a 100-person class that I would get an "A" with no further work if I could tell him what country had the worst groundwater arsenic contamination.  I knew the answer—Bangladesh—but I said I didn’t know.

Aimee
1. What is your current state of mind? a silent scream, which is kind of giving me a headache
2. Who is your favorite fictional hero? Princess Marya Rostova, "War and Peace" (lest you think that sounds pretentious, read on)
3. What is the last book you read? "Virgin: The Untouched History"
4. What do you consider the most overrated virtue? stoicism,
possibly also virginity

5. What is your greatest extravagance? sleep, romance novels
(lingering effects of my masters project), restaurant meals (very boring, I know — I should have said weekend trips to Bali or something)
6. What living person do you most despise? It would be so easy to say anybody connected with the Bush administration…and right now I am having a failure of imagination. I love everybody!
7. If you could choose to come back as something what would it be? Somebody’s pet cat.  They get to sleep all day, get petted a lot, but only when they want to, and don’t have to perform any stupid tricks.
8. On what occasion do you lie? to my parents, generally about weekend activities and personal finances
9. What is your greatest regret? thinking that working at the University of Chicago Press was actually a good idea
10.When and where are you happiest? In the car, heading out of town, great music on the car radio, somebody I love (or can at least tolerate for a week or so) in the other seat.

Srabani
1. What is your current state of mind? TIRED
2. Who is your favorite fictional DON’T REALLY HAVE ONE HERO
3. What is the last book you read? THE NAMESAKE
4. What do you consider the most overrated virtue? SELFLESSNESS
5. What is your greatest extravagance? SHOES
6. What living person do you most despise? DON’T REALLY SPEND TOO MUCH TIME DESPISING PEOPLE…
7. If you could choose to come back as something what would it be? A DOG IN AMERICA — THEY ARE MORE PAMPERED THAN KIDS
8. On what occasion do you lie? WHEN I’M REALLY LATE FOR
SOMETHING
9. What is your greatest regret? BEING TOO PRACTICAL WHEN I WAS YOUNGER
10.When and where are you happiest? IN NEPAL WHEN I LIVED THERE FOR ALMOST THREE YEARS

Sarah
1. Vexd (at being asked to fill out this questionnaire)2. The Bell Jar’s Esther Greenwood, or Buffy the Vampire Slayer3. People’s Movements, People’s Press: The journalism of social justice movements by Bob Ostertag4. Temperance5. Alcohol (see above)6. I try to hate people’s behavior, not people. Examples include complacency, bigotry, and not stepping away from the doors on crowded subway cars.7. A trust-fund zillionaire (link to Archie’s BOB) and thus able to start my own small magazine8. Never. Or just now.9. The name of the feminist literary magazine my friends and I published in college. Wingéd Nation? What were we thinking?
10. Working on the New York Review of Magazines, of course

Nicholas
1. What is your current state of mind? — Elated
2. Who is your favorite fictional hero? – Nicholas Sabloff
3. What is the last book you read? — The Sea by John Banville
4. What do you consider the most overrated virtue? — steadfastness
5. What is your greatest extravagance? — Eating out, seeing as I currently have no income.
6. What living person do you most despise? — I don’t spend my time thinking about such things
7. If you could choose to come back as something what would it be?--a bridge
8. On what occasion do you lie? — When someone cooks
dinner and asks "what did you think?"
9. What is your greatest regret? — Spending too much time in any one place
10.When and where are you happiest? — The first 24 hours in a new city.

J.P.
1. Supremely stressed out.
2. Darkwing Duck
3. God’s Choice by George Weigel.
4. Being “nice.”
5. Jet-Puffed Marshmallows.
6. Hillary Rodham Clinton.
7. A marshmallow.
8. When police officers ask me what speed I was going.
9. Never having toured the White House or The Capitol while living in Washington for four years.
10. In the driver’s seat with the windows down and music blaring driving through the countryside on a hot summer day.

Charlene

1. What is your current state of mind? Warm.
2. Who is your favorite fictional hero? I once answered a question like this with Charles Ryder from Brideshead Revisted  — but now I can’t remember why.
3. What is the last book you read? This question could not have come at a more embarrassing moment in my reading life. I’m halfway through both Lewis Smedes’ Sex for Christians and Wharton’s House of Mirth.
4. What do you consider the most overrated virtue? "Topped with cheese."
5. What is your greatest extravagance? None, really. I’m a cheap date.
6. What living person do you most despise? The weasel owner of my apartment’s realty company.
7. If you could choose to come back as something what would it be?Peter Meehan’s kitchen table.
8. On what occasion do you lie? See below.
9. What is your greatest regret? Fraudulently entering an
undergraduate Valentine’s Day couple contest as a lesbian.
10.When and where are you happiest? I like farms at breakfast time.

.

 

Jenni Wu
1. What is your current state of mind? Baffled!
2. Who is your favorite fictional hero? Prince Andrei, Pierre, VV, HH (handsome men from Russian pens).
3. What is the last book you read? The Forest People: A Study of the Pygmies of the Congo, by Colin M. Turnbull
4. What do you consider the most overrated virtue? Friendliness
5. What is your greatest extravagance? I’ve played over four hundred hours of Final Fantasy.
6. What living person do you most despise? Matthew Brenton Woolsey

7. If you could choose to come back as something what would it be? Matthew Barney’s brain
8. On what occasion do you lie? There’s no predictable pattern.
9. What is your greatest regret? What kind of question is this?
10.When and where are you happiest? To answer in the past tense: Iowa City, Summer 2006.

Archie
1 Bloated
2 Wodehouse’s Psmith; Anne Elliot, from Austen’s Persuasion
3 What is the WhatDave Eggers
4 aggressive good health
5 Laundry round the corner at 70 cents a pound
6 No-one I know
7 Turtles seem to have a pretty nice life. Failing which, a
professional soccer player
8 On a cowardly one
9 Difficult to rank, but probably something to do with q 8
10 At dinner with people I love; having a lie-in

Jake
1. What is your current state of mind? — employable
2. Who is your favorite fictional hero? — Aeneas
3. What is the last book you read? — The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco
4. What do you consider the most overrated virtue? — faith
5. What is your greatest extravagance? — none
6. What living person do you most despise? — O.J. Mayo
7. If you could choose to come back as something what would it be? — Where am I going in the first place?
8. On what occasion do you lie? — When talking about my
extravagances
9. What is  your greatest regret? — Not telling the truth
10. When and where are you happiest? — Asking the questions, not answering them

Mark
What is your current state of mind?  Tired
Who is your favorite fictional hero? The Sting’s Henry Gondorff
What is the last book you read? The Looming Tower
What do you consider the most overrated virtue? Modesty
What is your greatest extravagance? Gambling
What living person do you most despise? Rush Limbaugh
If you could choose to come back as something what would it be? A University of North Carolina basketball player
On what occasion do you lie? Playing poker
What is your greatest regret? That I didn’t start playing basketball or golf when I was 3.
When and where are you happiest? Cinque Terra, Italy

Kim
1. What is your current state of mind? Restless
2. Who is your favorite fictional hero? Jack Bauer
3. What is the last book you read? Does the May issue of Lucky count?
4. What do you consider the most overrated virtue? Patience
5. What is your greatest extravagance? Crumbs cupcakes
6. What living person do you most despise? Spencer from "The Hills."
7. If you could choose to come back as something what would it be? One of Oprah’s dogs.
8. On what occasion do you lie? When I’m asked if I read The New Yorker every week.
9. What is your greatest regret? Paying $10.25 to see "Nacho Libre."
10.When and where are you happiest? May 16, 2007 in the Roone Arledge Auditorium.

Missing:
Issa
Nola
Laura
Julie

 

 

BACK