Proust/Tobin

The time has come for the latest installment of our ongoing, and ripped off, Proust Questionnaire project. This week bookseller and writer Adam Tobin spills his guts.

Introduction to Adam Tobin

Adam Tobin owns and operates Unnameable Books, a new & used bookstore in Brooklyn. His poems and stories have appeared in various places, under a variety of names and pseudonyms. Any Group Can Claim Responsibility And Other Poems is forthcoming from Mondo Bummer.

Adam Tobin Answers the Proust Questionnaire

Your favorite virtue.
Empathy.

Your favorite qualities in a man.
Sincerity, intelligence, imagination, tenderness.

Your favorite qualities in a woman.
Sincerity, intelligence, imagination, machismo.

Your chief characteristic.
I have hair.

What you appreciate the most in your friends.
Their radicalism.

Your main fault.
I don't always do what I say, nor say what I'm doing.

Your favorite occupation.
Buying and selling books while listening to music.

Your idea of happiness.
Good food, good sex, good shelter, good company.

Your idea of misery.
Bad art.

If not yourself, who would you be?
Georges Perec.

Where would you like to live?
I've always fantasized about living in Indianapolis, but I expect the real thing is pretty boring.

Your favorite prose authors.
Cortazar, Queneau, G. Stein, L. Davis.

Your favorite poets.
Right now I am reading Judith Goldman, Leslie Scalapino, Rachel Levitsky and Rachel Zolf. I also love William Shakespeare. I never tire of Zukofsky or Oppen, Creeley, Ashbery or Spicer.

Your favorite heroes in fiction.
Edgar (son of Gloucester). Valentin Bru. Doctor Faustroll. You.

Your favorite heroines in fiction.
Rose Tyler. Alette. Nadja. Krazy Kat.

Your favorite painters and composers.
Morton Feldman, Roscoe Mitchell, Arnold Schoenberg, Robert Rauschenberg, Pauline Oliveros, J.S. Bach, Meredith Monk, Anthony Braxton.

Your heroes in “real life.”
See above.

What characters in history do you most dislike?
Ezra Pound.

Your favorite names.
After much deliberation, we named our cats Ignatz and Hepzibah.

What do you hate the most?
Power.

What military event do you admire the most?
Riding elephants over the alps.

What reform do you admire the most?
Free verse.

The natural talent you’d like to be gifted with.
Musical virtuosity.

How do you wish to die?
Old.

What is your present state of mind?
Hungry.

For what fault do you have the most toleration?
Rudeness.

Your favorite motto.
"From each according to his ability, to each according to his need."