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

2. What year did Raymond Carver move to Chico, California?
(a) 1962.
(b) 1958.
(c) 1975.
(d) 1965.

3. Of whose writing does Gardner say that no reader can doubt the impulse to capture real life, "the special quality of country-Welsh craziness"?
(a) Shakespeare.
(b) Samuel Beckett.
(c) John Updike.
(d) Dylan Thomas.

4. 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 Life and Times of Chaucer.
(c) Grendel.
(d) The King's Indian.

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

Short Answer Questions

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

2. What masterpiece of James Joyce does Gardner suggest typing out for language growth in Chapter 1?

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

4. What does Gardner say we call a writer who has less feeling for his characters than we feel they deserve?

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

Short Essay Questions

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

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

3. How does Gardner define "setting," "plot," and "theme" in Chapter 1?

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

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

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

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

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

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

10. Where did Gardner learn his method of writing?

(see the answer keys)

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