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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What word does Gardner use to mean a phrase is worn out and overused?
(a) Ironic.
(b) Sentimental.
(c) Cliche.
(d) Trite.

2. Who wrote Divine Comedy?
(a) Bloom.
(b) Dante.
(c) Chekhov.
(d) Joyce.

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

4. Gardner notes in Chapter 1 that all writing requires some measure of a ____ state.
(a) Brave.
(b) Trance.
(c) Confident.
(d) Fearful.

5. Gardner states that the effective writer leads the reader into a continuous what?
(a) Story line.
(b) Dream.
(c) Trance.
(d) Characterization.

6. What author does Gardner remark has a persistent mean streak in his writing?
(a) Salinger.
(b) Joyce.
(c) Hemingway.
(d) Kerouac.

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

8. Gardner compares Melville's Moby Dick with what in Chapter 1?
(a) To Have and Have Not.
(b) Omoo.
(c) Anna Karanina.
(d) Emma.

9. What author does Gardner remark has a bad habit of breaking the vivid and continuous dream by pouring on the rhetoric in Chapter 1?
(a) Joyce.
(b) Faulkner.
(c) Hemingway.
(d) Salinger.

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

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

12. In Chapter 1, Gardner writes, "Though there are exceptions, as a rule the good novelist does not worry primarily about ____ brilliance."
(a) Artistic.
(b) Creative.
(c) Auditory.
(d) Linguistic.

13. To whose poetry and prose had Gardner made allusions to in the novel Grendel?
(a) Lord Byron.
(b) Percy Shelley.
(c) William Blake.
(d) Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

14. What is the name of the man who moves next door to his teenage daughter in Gardner's hypothetical story in Chapter 1?
(a) Frank.
(b) Bob.
(c) James.
(d) Bill.

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

Short Answer Questions

1. Which author does Gardner state had "gazelle eyes" which dominated the room in Chapter 1?

2. Which author does Gardner say has a style at parties to take to the floor at any cost, telling funny stories?

3. With what older colleague did Gardner publish an anthology of fiction at Chico College?

4. Who developed the style of the "epiphany story" in The Dubliners?

5. What is, according to Gardner, the one quality in fiction that cannot be faked?

(see the answer keys)

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