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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through “Something To Do” .

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What is the title of the third story in Zadie Smith’s collection, Intimations?
(a) Something to write.
(b) Something to Say.
(c) How to fill time during a pandemic.
(d) Something to Do.

2. What is one of the ways in which Smith said she had tried to resist her own nature?
(a) By wearing fake nails.
(b) By speaking with a fake accent.
(c) By dying her gray hair.
(d) By not keeping track of her menstrual cycles.

3. What type of person does Smith say has created some of the most powerful art she has seen?
(a) People who feel completely alone in the world.
(b) People who constantly strive for perfection.
(c) People who have no contact with the outside world.
(d) People who endlessly engage with their subjects.

4. Smith thinks that one reason Americans cannot fathom plagues is because they do not discriminate based on what?
(a) Skin color.
(b) Zip code.
(c) Wealth.
(d) Gender.

5. What image of “bored children” at home does Smith use in “The American Exception”?
(a) Twiddling their thumbs.
(b) Staring zombie like at a screen.
(c) Climbing the walls.
(d) Crying from boredom.

Short Answer Questions

1. The day Smith looked at the peonies in the Jefferson Market Garden was just a few days before what Smith refers to as what?

2. In “The American Exception,” Smith says that Americans attacked death as a series of what?

3. Though private interests play a role in the lives of many Americans, what private interest does Smith say should not be one of them?

4. Who is the author of the essay “Peonies”?

5. While looking on at the garden, Smith thinks of a quote by Nabokov regarding his inspiration for which novel?

(see the answer key)

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