The Questionnaire: Peggy Kamuf

By The QuestionnaireMarch 30, 2012

The Questionnaire: Peggy Kamuf
How do you get up in the morning?

Usually eagerly.


Do you succumb to nostalgia?

No, I indulge in it.


Best piece of advice you ever received?

Stop writing for the day when you know what the next sentence will be.


Who is your imagined audience?

Ghosts. Does it at all coincide with the real one? Yes, eventually.


What country would you want to be exiled in?

Karekare Beach, New Zealand.


What's your favorite negative emotion?

To my sense, a negative emotion has such a negative charge that it repulses.  If an emotion attracts and is a "favorite," then it is not really negative at all, no matter what the etiquette books say.  For example, anger.  I can embrace anger.


What is your go-to shoe?

A pair of cheap black-leather boots bought on the boul Mich more than ten years ago. They look like those flat-soled, lace-up, mid-calf shoes that prizefighters used to wear.


What's your poison?

Snack foods.


What's your problem?

Snack foods.


Title of the book you're probably never going to write, but would kind of like to get around to?

Rousseau and I.


What are you so afraid of?

Rousseau and I.


Do you require a high thread count? 

On my bed or on the page?


Does age matter?

No, but experience does.


Is there a literary community?

Virtually, perhaps.

LARB Contributor

The Questionnaire is, as her name suggests, a multifarious and mysterious interlocutor. Chameleon-like, her questions change their color as they approach each new interviewee.

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