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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What did Garner always wear, according to Raymond Carver in the Forward?
(a) A black suit.
(b) A gray fedora.
(c) A gray suit.
(d) A brown suit.

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

3. Who is the author of All the King's Men?
(a) William Faulkner.
(b) Franz Kafka.
(c) Robert Penn Warren.
(d) Ernest Hemingway.

4. In what novel does Gardner note the rooftop scene as being one of surprise in Chapter 1?
(a) Nicholas Nickleby.
(b) Seize the Day.
(c) Emma.
(d) Crime and Punishment.

5. Gardner states that in the works of Shakespeare, language always serves character and what?
(a) Irony.
(b) Action.
(c) Wit.
(d) Aesthetic.

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

7. Who is the author of The Turn of the Screw?
(a) Henry James.
(b) Henry Melville.
(c) Dylan Thomas.
(d) James Joyce.

8. What does Gardner say we call a writer who has less feeling for his characters than we feel they deserve?
(a) Tedious.
(b) Mannered.
(c) Stylized.
(d) Frigid.

9. 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) Mannered.
(c) Bad.
(d) Tedious.

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

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

12. 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?
(a) Moliere.
(b) Anthony Trollope.
(c) James Joyce.
(d) F. Scott Fitzgerald.

13. 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) Dylan Thomas.
(c) Shakespeare.
(d) Samuel Beckett.

14. What is one of the philosophers who has maintained that words inevitably distance us from the brute existence, according to Gardner in Chapter 1?
(a) Nietzsche.
(b) Kierkegaard.
(c) Plato.
(d) Socrates.

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

Short Answer Questions

1. What story of Robert Penn Warren's did Raymond Carver read in Gardner's class at Chico State College?

2. Who is the author of Death in Venice?

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

4. Who wrote Sister Carrie and An American Tragedy?

5. Of what author does Gardner say his heroes are clown-heroes knocked around by the universe?

(see the answer keys)

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