View a FREE sample

This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Chapter 4, Faith.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What does Gardner claim is helpful, if it can be kept in partial control, to keep the novelist driven?
(a) A tendency to drink.
(b) A need for love.
(c) A tendency to prove himself.
(d) A psychological wound.

2. Gardner writes in Chapter 2 that in the workshop he is teaching he encountered a story which he hopes to publish titled what?
(a) "Thoughts."
(b) "Tomorrow."
(c) "Exit."
(d) "Jason."

3. Where is one of the oldest and best known writing workshops?
(a) Kentucky.
(b) Iowa.
(c) Kansas.
(d) New Hampshire.

4. Who is the author of The Turn of the Screw?
(a) Henry James.
(b) Henry Melville.
(c) Dylan Thomas.
(d) James Joyce.

5. Which author does Gardner say has a style at parties to take to the floor at any cost, telling funny stories?
(a) Truman Capote.
(b) Stanley Elkin.
(c) Joyce Carol Oates.
(d) Bernard Malamud.

Short Answer Questions

1. Gardner describes the despair that comes while writing the first three long chapters of which of his novels?

2. Which philosopher maintained that nothing a writer writes means anything, "all the words are a lunatic blithering," since all language is by nature false and misleading?

3. What word does Gardner use to mean a phrase is worn out and overused?

4. What quirk of speech does Gardner say New Yorkers replace "take" with?

5. In Chapter 2, what does Gardner say the world has far more than it needs?

(see the answer key)

This section contains 235 words (approx. 1 page at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample