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

Multiple Choice Questions

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

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

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

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

5. 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) Faulkner.
(b) Hemingway.
(c) Salinger.
(d) Joyce.

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

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

8. What masterpiece of James Joyce does Gardner suggest typing out for language growth in Chapter 1?
(a) "The Dead."
(b) "Ulysses."
(c) "Finnegan's Wake."
(d) "The Wall."

9. What does Gardner claim is helpful, if it can be kept in partial control, to keep the novelist driven?
(a) A need for love.
(b) A tendency to drink.
(c) A tendency to prove himself.
(d) A psychological wound.

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

11. Whose disguise in Jane Eyre does Gardner comment on as surprising in Chapter 1?
(a) Mr. Rochester.
(b) Mr. Wolverton.
(c) Mr. Darby.
(d) Mr. Bryg.

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

13. Gardner notes in Chapter 1 that Mercutio's madness is fantastic and what?
(a) Ironic.
(b) Justified.
(c) Phantasmic.
(d) Unbalanced.

14. What author does Gardner say has a deep misanthropic mistrust in Chapter 1?
(a) Dickens.
(b) Flaubert.
(c) Steinbeck.
(d) Bedlow.

15. What magazine does Gardner suggest for good literary work in Chapter 1?
(a) The London Book Review.
(b) The New Yorker.
(c) The Reader's Digest.
(d) The Londoner.

Short Answer Questions

1. 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?

2. Who is the author of Piers Plowman?

3. Which sci-fi author wrote A Canticle for Liebowitz?

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

5. What painter does Gardner remark in Chapter 1 never sold a painting in his life?

(see the answer keys)

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