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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Chapter 4, Faith.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. In Chapter 2, Gardner writes that the "true young novelist has the stamina, patience, and single-mindedness of a" what?
(a) Mule.
(b) Mother.
(c) Draft horse.
(d) Elephant.

2. As when learning to bicycle, writer should take one thing at a time: perfect a passage of description, then a passage of dialog, then move to the larger units of what?
(a) Poems.
(b) Scenes.
(c) Short stories.
(d) Novels.

3. Of what author does Gardner say his heroes are clown-heroes knocked around by the universe?
(a) James.
(b) Hemingway.
(c) Odets.
(d) Kafka.

4. Who wrote Bartelby the Scrivener?
(a) Thomas Mann.
(b) James Joyce.
(c) Ernest Hemingway.
(d) Herman Melville.

5. Gardner describes the despair that comes while writing the first three long chapters of which of his novels?
(a) Mickelsson's Ghosts.
(b) October Light.
(c) Grendel.
(d) Gudgekin the Thistle Girl.

Short Answer Questions

1. What is the name of the writer's conference where Gardner has frequently worked with writing assistants?

2. What publishing house did Gardner send Grendel to first?

3. What author does Gardner remark has a bad habit of breaking the vivid and continuous dream by pouring on the rhetoric in Chapter 1?

4. Who is the author of Death in Venice?

5. Gardner states that the ending of the novel does not exist where?

(see the answer key)

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