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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. Which of the following dystopian authors does Rushdie reference?

2. Which of the following came to the PEN World Voiced festival from Brooklyn?

3. With which of the following does the first essay of the section, “Truth,” begin?

4. At which institution has Rushdie lodged his papers?

5. Which of the following of Rushdie’s characters does he admit borrows from a childhood friend?

Short Essay Questions

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

2. In what does Rushdie situate the origin of auteur theory?

3. What three countries does Rushdie comment that he has “spent [his] life caring about” (211)?

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

5. What does Rushdie call the most ancient question (180)?

6. How does Rushdie describe Slothrop?

7. What does Rushdie note caused the characters drawn from his biography to come alive?

8. What choice does Rushdie note is required to produce Othello?

9. What does Rushdie note as a reason the interviews in the Paris Review are worth attention?

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

If the anthology were a work of fiction and nothing else about the work were changed, how reliable would the narrator be? Why?

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

In “Heraclitus,” Rushdie asserts “These are the four roots of the self: language, place, community, custom” (58). Does your experience bear out the assertion? How or how not?

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