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

Multiple Choice Questions

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

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

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

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

5. What name does Gardner assign to the teenage daughter whose unknown father moves next door in Chapter 1?
(a) Laura.
(b) Sarah.
(c) Wanda.
(d) Michelle.

6. What is, according to Gardner, the one quality in fiction that cannot be faked?
(a) Love.
(b) Honor.
(c) Strangeness.
(d) Beauty.

7. 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) Stylized.
(c) Bad.
(d) Tedious.

8. Gardner states in Chapter 1 that Canterbury Tales is a disguised what?
(a) Sermon.
(b) War poem.
(c) Shakespearean ode.
(d) Love poem.

9. Who is the author of Death in Venice?
(a) Thomas Mann.
(b) Clifford Odets.
(c) William Shakespeare.
(d) Herman Melville.

10. Which author does Gardner state had "gazelle eyes" which dominated the room in Chapter 1?
(a) Joyce Carol Oates.
(b) Anthony Trollope.
(c) James Joyce.
(d) F. Scott Fitzgerald.

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

12. Who is one of the writers Gardner notes in Chapter 1 as having both a fine ear for language and also a fascination with the materials?
(a) Hemingway.
(b) Fitzgerald.
(c) Joyce.
(d) Proust.

13. What psychologist suggests that Jack and the Beanstalk is about penis envy?
(a) Bruno Bettelheim.
(b) Carl Jung.
(c) Sigmund Freud.
(d) Madison Thomas.

14. What story of Robert Penn Warren's did Raymond Carver read in Gardner's class at Chico State College?
(a) "Ulysses."
(b) "Blackberry Winter."
(c) "Last of the Mohicans."
(d) "To Have and Have Not."

15. 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) "God only knows."
(b) "Definitely yet."
(c) "You'll know in time."
(d) "Definitely no."

Short Answer Questions

1. What author of Over the Edge does Gardner cite in Chapter 1?

2. 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"?

3. Who wrote Bartelby the Scrivener?

4. In Chapter 1, Gardner writes that one is unable to write for everyone, "try to win the audience both of Saul Bellow and" whom?

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

(see the answer keys)

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