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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. The store to which Irina dispatches Pushkin for sugar is on what street?

2. How does “The Line” gloss the term “mir”?

3. In what city does Touchett have a grandmother?

4. How much is Touchett paid for his first calligraphic efforts for Pennybrook?

5. Where does Touchett’s roommate work?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Touchett’s work on Dos Passos’s signature come across?

2. Why does Touchett move to New York?

3. Why is Pushkin unable to retrieve milk as Irina had instructed?

4. On what does “The Line” assert “the wisdom of the peasant is founded” (5)?

5. What does “The Line” suggest makes a discussion of the weather a pleasantry?

6. What qualities does “The Ballad of Timothy Touchett” note are needed to read collections of letters?

7. Why is Pushkin pleased the bakery where he initially queues offers only one product?

8. How is Irina employed in her Moscow collective?

9. Why, per “Hasta Luego,” is emotional contagion important?

10. What does Jerry note is the virtue of having a flight canceled early?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Similarly, the lengths of chapters influence reading. What pattern of chapter- and section-length is present in the anthology, if any? What effect does the length of chapters and sections have on the reading? How is the effect achieved?

Essay Topic 2

The narrator of “The Line” asks the following question (13): “For to serve the ones we love and receive their approval in return, need life be any more complicated than that?” Does the remainder of the short story offer an answer to that question? If so, what is the answer and how is it presented? If not, what effect does raising the question and refusing to answer it have for the reader?

Essay Topic 3

To what other writer’s work in your experience does Towles’s seem most similar? What makes the writers similar? What differentiates them? Overall, which do you regard as doing better at the craft of writing, and why?

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