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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. Who is the Danish aristocrat mentioned in Chapter 2?
(a) Osip Mandelstam.
(b) Wallace Stevens.
(c) Sverre Magnus.
(d) Wilhelm Dinesen.

2. What animal, according to Dillard, is an analogy for characters in a writer's book "taking over"?
(a) A shark.
(b) The lion.
(c) The caterpillar.
(d) The sea star.

3. What book was Dillard working on in Roanoke, Virginia?
(a) Holy the Firm.
(b) Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.
(c) Living by Fiction.
(d) An American Childhood.

4. What did Dillard's study carrel in the Hollins College library overlook?
(a) A grove of elm trees.
(b) A brick wall.
(c) A tar-and-gravel roof.
(d) A river.

5. Which insect is discussed in the book as part of an entomological experiment?
(a) A fly.
(b) Phataria.
(c) A butterfly.
(d) A worm.

Short Answer Questions

1. Who did Dillard see standing at the chess table in the Roanoke library one night?

2. What does Dillard have to say about appealing workplaces for writing?

3. Who claimed to have written for twenty hours a day?

4. What does Dillard's "line of words" do with random pictures in the writer's mind?

5. According to Dillard, what kind of life is a life of sensation?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why did the inchworm in Dillard's story keep asking itself, "What! No further"?

2. Why did a ritual slaughterer bid goodbye to his wife and children every morning as if it were his last, in Chapter 1?

3. When Dillard glanced in the daylight at one of the stacks of books she regularly touched to feel her way at night, what surprised her?

4. What decision did Dillard make to finally shut herself off from all distractions at the library carrel?

5. What analogy does Dillard use to explain how a book leads its writer on?

6. When the cab driver in New York sang songs with Dillard, why did he sing one dull song twice?

7. Why does Dillard say that she made a pen drawing of the scenes outside her library window?

8. What, outside Dillard's library window, proved to cause the most distraction to her work?

9. Why does Dillard believe a writer often wants to refrain from throwing away the beginnings of the work she has created?

10. When Dillard was working in the library at night, how did she find her way around in the dark?

(see the answer keys)

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