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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

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

2. 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) Plato.
(b) Kant.
(c) Nietzsche.
(d) Heidegger.

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

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

5. Who developed the style of the "epiphany story" in The Dubliners?
(a) Joyce.
(b) Conrad.
(c) McKinley.
(d) Beckett.

Short Answer Questions

1. Whose disguise in Jane Eyre does Gardner comment on as surprising in Chapter 1?

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

3. What is one of the philosophers who has maintained that words inevitably distance us from the brute existence, according to Gardner in Chapter 1?

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

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

Short Essay Questions

1. What does Gardner remark of the author's sense of observation in Chapter 1?

2. What does Gardner say in Chapter 1 regarding "verbal sensitivity?" What does this term mean?

3. What does Gardner write of Nabokov in Chapter 1?

4. What does Gardner say of "recognizing the significant" in Chapter 1?

5. How does Gardner describe traditional plot, victim stories, and "epiphany stories?"

6. What essential things must an aspiring author understand in order to pursue writing?

7. What does Gardner assert of the author learning character through television in Chapter 1?

8. What does Gardner write of expressing characters' emotions in Chapter 1?

9. How does Gardner explain characterization and story through his hypothetical story in Chapter 1?

10. What does Gardner suggest as ways to understand the psychology of characters unlike themselves?

(see the answer keys)

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