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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. In what novel does Levin propose to Kitty, as cited in Chapter 1?
(a) Anna Karenina.
(b) Crime and Punishment.
(c) Nicholas Nickleby.
(d) Emma.

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

3. Who wrote Bartelby the Scrivener?
(a) Thomas Mann.
(b) James Joyce.
(c) Herman Melville.
(d) Ernest Hemingway.

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

5. Gardner claims he has been happy writing since the age of what?
(a) 12.
(b) 6.
(c) 8.
(d) 16.

Short Answer Questions

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

2. Whose disguise in Jane Eyre does Gardner comment on as surprising in Chapter 1?

3. What was Gardner's first wife's name?

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

5. In Chapter 1, Gardner writes, "Though there are exceptions, as a rule the good novelist does not worry primarily about ____ brilliance."

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Gardner describe traditional plot, victim stories, and "epiphany stories?"

2. What does Gardner remark of the author's sense of observation in Chapter 1?

3. What is the second indicator of talent that Gardner discusses in Chapter 1? What author does he cite in this?

4. Who does Gardner refer to as the "best" novelists in Chapter 1? What lesson does he cite of them?

5. What state does good fiction elicit in the reader, according to Gardner?

6. How does Gardner define "setting," "plot," and "theme" in Chapter 1?

7. What hypothetical situation does Gardner uses as an example of plot in Chapter 1?

8. What does Gardner assert of the author learning character through television in Chapter 1?

9. What does Gardner write of Nabokov in Chapter 1?

10. Where did Gardner learn his method of writing?

(see the answer keys)

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