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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Where did Dillard forget about a boiling teakettle and burn it?
(a) Her kitchen.
(b) A faculty lounge in a university.
(c) A cabin on Puget Sound.
(d) An office in a college.

2. What did Frederick Buechner note about an author realizing that he is actually writing?
(a) It calls for a break or celebration.
(b) The wood must be split and fired.
(c) It must go on once it is noticed.
(d) The writer should revise what was written.

3. What did a Dinka believe his own memories and daydreams to be?
(a) Psychologically important.
(b) External to himself.
(c) An extension of himself.
(d) The meaning of life.

4. Why did Dillard feel that an author must visit her work every day?
(a) To feel sympathy for it.
(b) To hope it will get better.
(c) To be brave about it.
(d) To reassert mastery over it.

5. What is a writer compared to in Chapter 5?
(a) A tiger trainer.
(b) A boxer.
(c) An alligator wrestler.
(d) A moth flying into a flame.

6. What does the impulse to save something good for a better place later signify, according to Dillard?
(a) It should be forgotten.
(b) It should be used later.
(c) It should be used now.
(d) It should be hoarded.

7. What kept the teakettle that Dillard used in a faculty lounge from whistling?
(a) It was an electric kettle.
(b) An aluminum lid jammed over its mouth.
(c) The mouth of the kettle was always kept open.
(d) It was not a whistling teakettle.

8. What is the finished work's relationship to the vision of it, as viewed by Dillard?
(a) A final draft compared to a second draft.
(b) Well-known passages compared to the vision filled in.
(c) Something unchanging compared to something temporal.
(d) Something new compared to an antique.

9. At the island on Haro Strait, why would a man overboard die within ten minutes?
(a) The water was very cold.
(b) There were sharks.
(c) The channel made the water unswimmable.
(d) The whales were numerous.

10. According to Glenn's story, what was Ferrar after in the water?
(a) A yellow and blue rowboat.
(b) An Alaskan cedar log.
(c) His wife, June.
(d) A large fish.

11. What did Dillard study in Chapter 5?
(a) Literature.
(b) Exhilaration.
(c) The world.
(d) Paintboxes.

12. When Dillard lacked sufficient energy for writing one morning in Chapter 3, what does she say she did to try and get it?
(a) Ran a few miles and ate.
(b) Split some wood and smoked.
(c) Played the recorder.
(d) Smoked and drank coffee.

13. Which poem did Dillard often read aloud?
(a) The Comet.
(b) Miracles.
(c) Sea Hollly.
(d) The Tower.

14. Why was Dillard's finger in pain at times as she wrote in the university office in Virginia?
(a) She had a clothespin stuck to her finger until the water boiled.
(b) Her fingers cramped up from writing for so long.
(c) She got paper cuts.
(d) She spilled hot water on her fingers once in a while.

15. What does Dillard say that she thinks happens to something, such as a writing idea, that you do not give up freely and abundantly?
(a) It will be poorly written.
(b) It becomes lost to you.
(c) It becomes better with age.
(d) Someone else will get it.

Short Answer Questions

1. What damage did the Smith-Corona typewriter do in Chapter 4?

2. In working-class France, what did Dillard say that experienced workers tell an apprentice who gets hurt or tired?

3. Who wrote, 'He goes because he must, as Galahad went towards the Grail; knowing that for those who can live it, this alone is life'?

4. What did Dillard realize when she spoke to the local sheriff in Chapter 3?

5. Why did Dillard momentarily feel she must quit writing in Chapter 3?

(see the answer keys)

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