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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Chapter 2, The Writer's Training and Education.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What author of experimental fiction teaches at Rice?
(a) Kurt Vonnegut.
(b) Max Apple.
(c) Michael James.
(d) Thomas Pinchon.

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

3. With what older colleague did Gardner publish an anthology of fiction at Chico College?
(a) Lennis Dunlap.
(b) David Wellesley.
(c) James Fenway.
(d) Michael Ewing.

4. Which philosopher maintained that nothing a writer writes means anything, "all the words are a lunatic blithering," since all language is by nature false and misleading?
(a) Kant.
(b) Plato.
(c) Heidegger.
(d) Nietzsche.

5. What book was Gardner writing when he remembered the altered sense coming over him while in the last chapter?
(a) October Light.
(b) Grendel.
(c) Nickel Mountain.
(d) The Resurrection.

Short Answer Questions

1. What was Gardner's first wife's name?

2. Who is cited as the head of the writing program at Johns Hopkins and favors new and strange styles?

3. What author does Gardner say was known to arrive at a party and sit for ten minutes or more staring at guests and not answering when people addressed him in Chapter1?

4. What does Gardner claim is helpful, if it can be kept in partial control, to keep the novelist driven?

5. In what novel does Levin propose to Kitty, as cited in Chapter 1?

(see the answer key)

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