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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 one thing Smith says that wealthy people would not do if suffering were relative?
(a) Buy so many things.
(b) Commit suicide.
(c) Work.
(d) Seek therapy.

2. In what city does Smith live at the start of “Peonies”?
(a) Los Angeles.
(b) New York.
(c) Chicago.
(d) Brooklyn.

3. Nabokov said the inspiration for his novel came from an article about an ape that drew what?
(a) His self-portrait.
(b) His own cage.
(c) Bananas.
(d) His captors.

4. “Truly laboring people,” Smith says, have to adhere to this, to which an artist does not have to adhere?
(a) A bus schedule.
(b) Traffic patterns.
(c) A time clock.
(d) A boss’s whim.

5. The day Smith looked at the peonies in the Jefferson Market Garden was just a few days before what Smith refers to as what?
(a) The Global Fumbling.
(b) The Global Humbling.
(c) The Global Submission.
(d) The Worldwide Humbling.

Short Answer Questions

1. In suffering like Mel Gibson, Smith says that prior to the pandemic people were learning about the link between privilege and what?

2. What does Smith say is the truest, most obvious reason why people write or make art?

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

4. What song does Smith reflect on how the lyrics would change if it were written for a man?

5. In the conversation Smith overhears at a Subway shop, Smith learns that the two women conversing are more appalled by what factor, than that the child is too young for technology?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does Smith say the country had begun to learn or discuss in regards to privilege prior to the virus?

2. In “The American Exception” Smith says that Americans attack death as what?

3. In what ways does Smith say she tried to resist what she felt was the cage of her gender when she was younger?

4. What does Smith compare the way in which she packs her free time to at the start of “Peonies’?

5. Whose speech does “The American Exception” begin with and what it is in regards to?

6. What does Smith say artists of all kinds are asked at some point in their lives?

7. What does Smith say about what disaster demands at the start of “The American Exception”?

8. How does Smith describe the space typically occupied by artists?

9. What is one of the societal issues Smith says the pandemic lockdown has forced many people to face?

10. Describe the article Smith references in “Suffering Like Mel Gibson” about a 17-year-old during lockdown.

(see the answer keys)

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