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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) How to fill time during a pandemic.
(b) Something to Do.
(c) Something to write.
(d) Something to Say.

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

3. While looking on at the garden, Smith thinks of a quote by Nabokov regarding his inspiration for which novel?
(a) Laura.
(b) Lolita.
(c) Mary.
(d) Glory.

4. Who were the few people, according to Smith, who did not have to “seek out something to do” during the pandemic?
(a) Essential workers.
(b) Writers.
(c) Gamers.
(d) Painters.

5. What term does Smith reference in “The American Exception” which Trump used in reference to other countries he saw as inferior?
(a) "Lowlife countries."
(b) "Shithole countries."
(c) "Crappy countries."
(d) "Unimportant countries."

Short Answer Questions

1. Which writer does Smith quote in her essay “Something to Do”?

2. Which president’s speech does Smith cite at the start of “The American Exception”?

3. What does Smith say we had before the pandemic instead of death?

4. What does Smith say has “rarely been random” in America in her essay “The American Exception”?

5. Smith thinks that one reason Americans cannot fathom plagues is because they do not discriminate based on what?

(see the answer key)

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