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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. 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"?
(a) F. Scott Fitzgerald.
(b) Dylan Thomas.
(c) John Updike.
(d) William Faulkner.

2. Which sci-fi author wrote A Canticle for Liebowitz?
(a) J.D. Salinger.
(b) Jack Humphries.
(c) Walter M. Miller, Jr.
(d) Kurt Vonnegut.

3. Gardner suggests the young writer get a first-rate freshman composition book such as An American Rhetoric by whom?
(a) Stuart Waterman.
(b) Michael A. Morris.
(c) W. W. Watt.
(d) James A. Richards.

4. What kind of intelligence does Gardner say is important to the writer in Chapter 1?
(a) Psychological.
(b) Philosophical.
(c) Storyteller's.
(d) Mathematics.

5. Who is the author of Crime and Punishment?
(a) Joyce.
(b) Nabokov.
(c) Dostoevsky.
(d) Flannagan.

Short Answer Questions

1. What is one of the philosophers who has maintained that words inevitably distance us from the brute existence, according to Gardner in Chapter 1?

2. Who is the author of The Turn of the Screw?

3. What psychologist suggests that Jack and the Beanstalk is about penis envy?

4. What anthology of fiction did Gardner publish with a colleague at Chico College?

5. To whose poetry and prose had Gardner made allusions to in the novel Grendel?

(see the answer key)

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