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

2. With what older colleague did Gardner publish an anthology of fiction at Chico College?
(a) Lennis Dunlap.
(b) David Wellesley.
(c) Michael Ewing.
(d) James Fenway.

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

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

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

Short Answer Questions

1. Gardner compares Melville's Moby Dick with what in Chapter 1?

2. What kind of intelligence does Gardner say is important to the writer in Chapter 1?

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

4. What book was Gardner writing when he remembered the altered sense coming over him while in the last chapter?

5. In what novel does Gardner note the rooftop scene as being one of surprise in Chapter 1?

Short Essay Questions

1. Where did Gardner learn his method of writing?

2. In Chapter 1, what does Gardner say the most common question of the aspiring writer is to him? What is the response?

3. What is the "moronic setup" that Gardner relates in Chapter 1?

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

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

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

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

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

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

10. What state does good fiction elicit in the reader, according to Gardner?

(see the answer keys)

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