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

2. Of whose writing does Gardner say that no reader can doubt the impulse to capture real life, "the special quality of country-Welsh craziness"?
(a) Shakespeare.
(b) John Updike.
(c) Dylan Thomas.
(d) Samuel Beckett.

3. Gardner suggests the young writer get a first-rate freshman composition book such as An American Rhetoric by whom?
(a) James A. Richards.
(b) Stuart Waterman.
(c) Michael A. Morris.
(d) W. W. Watt.

4. What author does Gardner remark has a persistent mean streak in his writing?
(a) Joyce.
(b) Salinger.
(c) Kerouac.
(d) Hemingway.

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

Short Answer Questions

1. With what older colleague did Gardner publish an anthology of fiction at Chico College?

2. Gardner writes in Chapter 1 that when the central character is a victim there is no what?

3. Who wrote Sister Carrie and An American Tragedy?

4. What does Gardner say we call a writer who has less feeling for his characters than we feel they deserve?

5. What psychologist suggests that Jack and the Beanstalk is about penis envy?

(see the answer key)

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