Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Wants Nothing To Do With Your Proust Questionnaire

Feb 22, 2013 15:48

I thought this would be of interest to the members of this comm.

How very him! ;) Especially the last two questions.
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Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Wants Nothing To Do With Your Proust Questionnaire

By

Rebecca Onion
Posted

Thursday, Feb. 21, 2013, at 11:20 AM

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Comments 12

petrusplancius February 22 2013, 21:04:01 UTC
I think they caught him on a bad day, he made no effort at all over that! 'Quite impartial', 'no strong opinions'.

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med_cat February 22 2013, 21:07:34 UTC
Indeed, doesn't look like his heart was in the game, was it ;) Surely he had some literary heroes whom he admired.

Some of the questions are the opinions he held, though...

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tweedisgood February 23 2013, 09:39:54 UTC
I disagree. There is a difference between lack of effort and conscious concealment. I think some of the answers are very revealing, and the non-answers are too, taking his life up until this point, and his particular circumstances at the time (thinking particularly of the Touie/Jean Leckie issue)

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petrusplancius February 23 2013, 09:58:25 UTC
In some cases maybe, but characters in history you most dislike 'very tolerant to them all', your favourite painters and composers, 'no strong opinions' - that sounds to me that he just couldn't be bothered. Similarly, I find it hard to believe that he had no favourite heroes in fiction, and there was no reason why he should have wanted to conceal who they were if he had. Perhaps the clue lies in his answer about his present state of mind: jaded!

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tripleransom February 23 2013, 01:09:59 UTC
"Present state of mind - jaded".

Ummm...yeah. coulda' guessed that one.

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tweedisgood February 23 2013, 09:37:38 UTC
This is fascinating, and explains a lot, thanks so much for posting it!

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med_cat February 23 2013, 21:24:44 UTC
My pleasure!

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I found this to be much more interesting than, apparently, a lot of people livejournal February 23 2013, 09:57:51 UTC
User tweedisgood referenced to your post from I found this to be much more interesting than, apparently, a lot of people saying: [...] Found amongst the papers of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle [...]

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wirral_bagpuss February 23 2013, 14:23:25 UTC
A great find! Sir ACD was indeed a man of great humour! And so very ahead of his time!

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med_cat February 23 2013, 21:25:02 UTC
Indeed, in some ways he was :)

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