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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 makes Hinkle Von Vampton’s boss think that he is losing his marbles?

2. What does Berbelang object to, in how people look at Van Gogh?

3. What does PaPaLaBas fit for his customers?

4. Where is Zuzu when the reader meets her?

5. How many artifacts will “Tam” collect and return?

Short Essay Questions

1. Describe the confrontation between Buddy Jackson and Schlitz.

2. Describe Buddy Jackson’s cabaret.

3. What does the Jes Grew want?

4. What affliction is PaPaLaBas trying to relieve the blacks of in North America?

5. How is Mumbo Jumbo different from most novels?

6. What is the status of The Text?

7. What is Mumbo Jumbo’s relationship with history?

8. Why does Woodrow Wilson Jefferson leave for New York?

9. What is the meaning when Safecracker Gould says that “the dances were difficult to write down” (p. 103)?

10. How does Woodrow Wilson Jefferson end up being hired by the Benign Monster?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

When is Mumbo Jumbo most itself? What is its characteristic passage, or moment? What makes that moment or passage the most representative of the book as a whole? Are there any places where the book seems to depart from its typical self, as if to become a different book?

Essay Topic 2

Use this book as a meditation on the value of a five-star rating system. Is a five-star system sufficient to a book like this? Would you need to have sub-topics for the rating system, for plot, characterization, language, etc? What other sub-topics would you need? What value or importance gets lost in a five-star scale? Design a scale that would be better for this book.

Essay Topic 3

Who is the audience for Mumbo Jumbo? What is the ideal reader for Mumbo Jumbo likely to think about the book’s main topics? How does this book try to affect the reader? What is it trying to teach him or her, or get him or her to do?

(see the answer keys)

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