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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Chapter 1, The Writer's Nature, Pages 1-34.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What does Gardner state in Chapter 1 that we call a writer who cares more for language than the other elements of fiction?
(a) Stylized.
(b) Tedious.
(c) Bad.
(d) Mannered.

2. Who wrote Sister Carrie and An American Tragedy?
(a) Raymond Carver.
(b) Theodore Dreiser.
(c) William Faulkner.
(d) Ernest Hemingway.

3. Who is one of the writers Gardner notes in Chapter 1 as having both a fine ear for language and also a fascination with the materials?
(a) Fitzgerald.
(b) Hemingway.
(c) Proust.
(d) Joyce.

4. What year did Raymond Carver move to Chico, California?
(a) 1965.
(b) 1958.
(c) 1962.
(d) 1975.

5. Where had John Gardner taught before Chico State College?
(a) Oberlin College.
(b) DePaul University.
(c) University of Ohio.
(d) New York University.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Gardner say we call a writer who has less feeling for his characters than we feel they deserve?

2. Gardner claims he has been happy writing since the age of what?

3. In Chapter 1, Gardner writes that one is unable to write for everyone, "try to win the audience both of Saul Bellow and" whom?

4. Of which writer does Gardner say, "the brilliant language with which he describes a minor character cannot help but suggest that the words he chooses are more important to him than the token secretary behind the desk"?

5. Of whose writing does Gardner say that no reader can doubt the impulse to capture real life, "the special quality of country-Welsh craziness"?

(see the answer key)

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