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

2. What does Gardner say "breeds success" in Chapter 1?
(a) Success.
(b) Dedication.
(c) Persistence.
(d) Connections.

3. Which title does Raymond Carver say is the only one he recalls of John Gardner's manuscripts in the Forward?
(a) Nickel Mountain.
(b) The King's Indian.
(c) Grendel.
(d) The Life and Times of Chaucer.

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

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

Short Answer Questions

1. What is the name of the man who moves next door to his teenage daughter in Gardner's hypothetical story in Chapter 1?

2. Who wrote Bartelby the Scrivener?

3. Who developed the style of the "epiphany story" in The Dubliners?

4. What is the first thing that Gardner states a writer needs to have in Chapter 1?

5. To whose poetry and prose had Gardner made allusions to in the novel Grendel?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does the young author learn technique through reading others?

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

3. What authors does Gardner use to illustrate language and character in Chapter 1?

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

5. Where did Gardner learn his method of writing?

6. What does Gardner write about showy language in Chapter 1?

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

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

9. What does Gardner relate about the "author's character" in Chapter 1? How does he describe "special intelligence?"

10. What hypothetical situation does Gardner uses as an example of plot in Chapter 1?

(see the answer keys)

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