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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. What does Nancy tell Joan is important to a man at the end of "Pretty Nancy"?

2. In "A Trip to Xanadu," what is the name of the pool at San Simeon?

3. What does Didion note that meeting attendees have an unusual knack for in "Getting Serenity"?

4. Didion uses and example from what underground paper at the end of her essay "Alicia and the Underground Press"?

5. In "Pretty Nancy," what does Joan say Nancy's husband is the "definition of" (35)?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does Joan say about the "great adventure" the men who fought in the 1940s compared to their sons "great adventure" (40) in Vietnam?

2. Why does Didion say that the so-called underground papers she discusses in "Alicia" are not really underground?

3. Where is Joan Didion in her essay "Fathers, Sons, Screaming Eagles" (38)?

4. How does Didion describe the way the Hearsts spent money in "A Trip to Xanadu"?

5. In what way does the newsman in "Pretty Nancy" try to manipulate the moment to achieve his desired outcome?

6. What do the tour guides in "A Trip to Xandadu" say about Hearsts sons?

7. What does Didion say about objectivity in "Alicia and the Underground Press"?

8. Who is Skip Skivington and what does he tell Joan about his son in "Fathers, Sons, and Screaming Eagles"?

9. In "A Trip to Xanadu," what is the castle people could see from Highway 1 and who built it?

10. What happened when Joan wrote a paper for one of her friends at Stanford? What was the paper about? What grade did he get? What grade did she get?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Write an essay analyzing how Joan Didion's personal bias might influence her writing. Use the following stories as reference: "Everywoman.com," "Last Words," and "Long Distance Runner."

Essay Topic 2

Choose 3 essays from Let Me Tell You What I Mean and write an essay about the significance of the time period for each essay. What commentary might the piece say about any significant event or belief of that time?

Essay Topic 3

Write an essay on the difference between a personal essay and a work of fiction. How might the reader be impacted differently for each genre? Why might a writer choose one over the other? Use examples from Let Me Tell You What I Mean to support your essay.

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