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

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

2. What is the first thing that Gardner states a writer needs to have in Chapter 1?
(a) Wisdom.
(b) Empathy.
(c) Verbal sensitivity.
(d) Intelligence.

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

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

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

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

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

8. 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) Nietzsche.
(c) Heidegger.
(d) Plato.

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

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

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

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

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

14. Which author does Gardner say has a style at parties to take to the floor at any cost, telling funny stories?
(a) Stanley Elkin.
(b) Truman Capote.
(c) Joyce Carol Oates.
(d) Bernard Malamud.

15. Which author wrote A Tale of Two Cities?
(a) Melville.
(b) Steinbeck.
(c) Bedlow.
(d) Dickens.

Short Answer Questions

1. Who wrote Finnegan's Wake?

2. Who wrote Sister Carrie and An American Tragedy?

3. Gardner claims he has been happy writing since the age of what?

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

5. What year did Raymond Carver move to Chico, California?

(see the answer keys)

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