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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. Alex tells the unnamed narrator to remember that he had felt responsible for his mother's diagnosis of what malady?
(a) Cancer.
(b) Tuberculosis.
(c) Shingles.
(d) Heart disease.

2. The unnamed narrator states in Part Four that he must have absolute quiet to engage in which activity?
(a) Reading.
(b) Bathing.
(c) Writing.
(d) Sleeping.

3. To what type of restaurant did Noor's mother take her to tell her the identity of her biological father?
(a) French.
(b) Mexican.
(c) Chinese.
(d) Italian.

4. In what field does Alena's friend Peter work?
(a) Literature.
(b) Accounting.
(c) Art.
(d) Marketing.

5. How many lines of what turns out to be ketamine does the unnamed narrator do at the party in Part Four?
(a) 0.
(b) 1.
(c) 2.
(d) 3.

Short Answer Questions

1. About what subject does the unnamed narrator pontificate when the intern begs him to speak aloud?

2. What is the only element of the physical world that gives the unnamed narrator a feeling of excitement?

3. The distinguished female author and the unnamed narrator both order what dish?

4. When the unnamed narrator attends a party in Part Four, he finds that the guests in the kitchen are different from the other guests in what way?

5. One morning, the unnamed narrator wakes up to find that what noisy activity is going on nearby?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is the only low point in the adventure Roberto and the unnamed narrator go on together in Part Three?

2. On what adventure does the unnamed narrator take eight-year-old Roberto in Part Three?

3. How does the theme of fatherhood enter the narrative in Part Four?

4. Name three excuses the unnamed narrator uses when people ask to see him during his writers' residency.

5. The unnamed narrator finds himself working diligently in Texas, but "on the wrong thing" (170). What other piece does he work on instead?

6. What is the unnamed narrator's specific reason for feeling the way he does about the totaled art?

7. What is "totaled art" (130) and how had Alena acquired some of it prior to the novel's opening?

8. What object does the unnamed narrator keep patting inside his pocket as he makes his way to the seventh floor of New-York Presbyterian Hospital?

9. In what way does the unnamed narrator set up a dichotomy between the art of the "readymade" (133) and the totaled art in Alena's institute?

10. What aspect of Walt Whitman's strange autobiography Specimen Days disgusts the unnamed narrator and why?

(see the answer keys)

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