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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. As which of the following did Hitchens address Mos Def?

2. Of what city’s organized crime does Roberto Saviano write?

3. Who was invited to speak at the opening ceremony of the 1986 PEN America event?

4. Which of the following prevails upon Clinton to meet personally with Rushdie?

5. What writer does Rushdie note denies desire to understand other writers’ processes?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Rushdie propose readers fight against censorship and artistic repression?

2. How does Rushdie explain the American preoccupation with religion?

3. Why does Rushdie posit that the United States tolerates Pakistan’s quiet hosting of terrorist groups and figures?

4. Paraphrase the remark by EB White about writing to children that Rushdie reports.

5. Paraphrase the question Rushdie asks Saul Bellow at PEN America in 1986?

6. For what reason was Sunflower Seeds cordoned off from the public?

7. How does Rushdie define adaptation?

8. What does Rushdie call “the final victory of the censor” (228)?

9. How does Rushdie define the “given” with which authors must contend?

10. How does Rushdie differentiate a “historical” fact from a “basic” fact?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Assuming that Languages of Truth should be standard reading for a given class and level, what class and what level? Why that class and why that level? What in the text suggests as much, and how does it do so?

Essay Topic 2

Section divisions, their titles, and chapter numbering / division schema are all components of paratext. That is, they are not part of the text but are associated with it closely and affect its meaning. What significance, if any, accrues to the chapter-numbering scheme at work in Languages of Truth? If there is significance, how does that significance manifest? If there is not, what in the anthology supports the paratextual divisions that are in place?

Essay Topic 3

It might be argued that the essays, taken together, comment about what, for Rushdie, is and is not good writing. What vision of good writing can be taken from the text, what in the text supports that vision, and how does it do so?

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This section contains 630 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample