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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Chapter 1, The Writer's Nature, Pages 34-72.

Multiple Choice Questions

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

2. What masterpiece of James Joyce does Gardner suggest typing out for language growth in Chapter 1?
(a) "The Dead."
(b) "Ulysses."
(c) "Finnegan's Wake."
(d) "The Wall."

3. In Chapter 1, Gardner states that "In a literary culture where the very notion of a 'masterpiece' is commonly thought" what?
(a) Impossible.
(b) Dangerous.
(c) Immature.
(d) Barbaric.

4. What is the honest answer to the question most young writer's ask of "Do I have what it takes to be a writer?" according to Gardner?
(a) "You'll know in time."
(b) "God only knows."
(c) "Definitely no."
(d) "Definitely yet."

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"?
(a) John Updike.
(b) Samuel Beckett.
(c) Dylan Thomas.
(d) Shakespeare.

Short Answer Questions

1. What is the name of the man who moves next door to his teenage daughter in Gardner's hypothetical story in Chapter 1?

2. What painter does Gardner remark in Chapter 1 never sold a painting in his life?

3. In Chapter 1, Gardner writes, "Though there are exceptions, as a rule the good novelist does not worry primarily about ____ brilliance."

4. What book was Gardner writing when he remembered the altered sense coming over him while in the last chapter?

5. What name does Gardner assign to the teenage daughter whose unknown father moves next door in Chapter 1?

(see the answer key)

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