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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Chapter 2.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What does Dillard say shocked her as she remembered a formal lunch with a publishing colleague in Chapter 2?
(a) The fanaticism of her twenties.
(b) Her plants dying.
(c) The sexist terms the man used.
(d) Her lack of entertaining people.

2. Where does Dillard say she wound up putting her pen drawing in Chapter 2?
(a) On her kitchen fridge.
(b) On the wall of the library.
(c) Between the pages of her novel.
(d) Taped to the venetian blinds.

3. What do television and films do to the body's senses, according to Dillard?
(a) Numb them.
(b) Make connections.
(c) They make the writer sense the need to write.
(d) Stimulate them.

4. What did Dillard find herself doing in the rare book room nearly every day for about two weeks?
(a) Playing chess with an unknown opponent.
(b) Looking for rare books on chess.
(c) Spying on the head librarian.
(d) Writing notes to a chess player.

5. Whose wife posed for the Liberty dime?
(a) Thomas Mann.
(b) Wallace Stevens.
(c) Osip Mandelstam.
(d) Wilhelm Dinesen.

Short Answer Questions

1. Who is the Danish aristocrat mentioned in Chapter 2?

2. What does Dillard compare writing to in the first paragraph of the book?

3. Dillard believes that some writers weaken their resolve to discard parts of their work. Why?

4. What was knocking on the carrel window as Dillard worked in Roanoke?

5. What does Dillard say that she makes a pen drawing of in Chapter 2?

(see the answer key)

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