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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. What is the name of the single book the unnamed narrator brings along with him for his residency in Texas?
(a) Evolution Days.
(b) Specimen Days.
(c) Creosote Days.
(d) Natural Days.

2. To whose apartment does the unnamed narrator go after he leaves the literary dinner in Part Three?
(a) Alena.
(b) Sharon.
(c) Jon.
(d) Alex.

3. What form of communication does the unnamed narrator use to communicate with Alena during his residency?
(a) Email.
(b) Phone calls.
(c) None.
(d) Text messages.

4. To what location is the unnamed narrator referring when he has the distinguished female author in hysterical laughter over the "masturbatorium" (125)?
(a) The library.
(b) The fertility clinic.
(c) The gay bar.
(d) The porn theater.

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

Short Answer Questions

1. While the unnamed narrator is at the bookstore, he runs into an acquaintance who invites him to a private showing of which artist's work?

2. Who pays the whole bill for everyone's dinner at Cochineal in Part Four?

3. What identity did Noor feel she had lost once she found out the true identity of her biological father?

4. What word does the unnamed narrator use to describe Alena's fourth-floor apartment?

5. How does the unnamed narrator react to holding pieces of a sculpture?

Short Essay Questions

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

2. 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?

3. 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?

4. For what reason does the unnamed narrator travel to Texas in Part Four?

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

6. What mistake does the intern make in Part Four and what similar mistake does the unnamed narrator make?

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

8. What are the consequences of the mistake the intern makes in Part Four?

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

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

(see the answer keys)

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