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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Chapter 1, The Writer's Nature, Pages 34-72.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Gardner notes in Chapter 1 that Mercutio's madness is fantastic and what?
(a) Phantasmic.
(b) Justified.
(c) Ironic.
(d) Unbalanced.

2. What is the honest answer to the question most young writer's ask of "Do I have what it takes to be a writer?" according to Gardner?
(a) "Definitely no."
(b) "You'll know in time."
(c) "Definitely yet."
(d) "God only knows."

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

4. What book was Gardner writing when he remembered the altered sense coming over him while in the last chapter?
(a) Grendel.
(b) October Light.
(c) Nickel Mountain.
(d) The Resurrection.

5. What magazine does Gardner suggest for good literary work in Chapter 1?
(a) The Reader's Digest.
(b) The Londoner.
(c) The London Book Review.
(d) The New Yorker.

Short Answer Questions

1. Who is the author of Crime and Punishment?

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

3. What is, according to Gardner, the one quality in fiction that cannot be faked?

4. In what novel does Gardner note the rooftop scene as being one of surprise in Chapter 1?

5. What story of Robert Penn Warren's did Raymond Carver read in Gardner's class at Chico State College?

(see the answer key)

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