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

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

3. What does Gardner say we call a writer who has less feeling for his characters than we feel they deserve?
(a) Stylized.
(b) Frigid.
(c) Mannered.
(d) Tedious.

4. Who wrote Bartelby the Scrivener?
(a) Thomas Mann.
(b) James Joyce.
(c) Herman Melville.
(d) Ernest Hemingway.

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

Short Answer Questions

1. What anthology of fiction did Gardner publish with a colleague at Chico College?

2. What does Gardner claim is helpful, if it can be kept in partial control, to keep the novelist driven?

3. What author does Gardner say has a deep misanthropic mistrust in Chapter 1?

4. Where did Raymond Carver move to Chico, California from?

5. Where had John Gardner taught before Chico State College?

Short Essay Questions

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

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

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

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

5. What is the second indicator of talent that Gardner discusses in Chapter 1? What author does he cite in this?

6. What does Gardner remark about theme in Chapter 1?

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

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

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

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

(see the answer keys)

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