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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 does the novel as a form usually represent, according to Dillard?
(a) Poetry.
(b) History.
(c) Society.
(d) Non-commericialism.

2. Referring to a new idea, who said, 'Cheep--and all at once there it is'?
(a) Stevens.
(b) Wilder.
(c) Boehme.
(d) Einstein.

3. What written advice was found that Michelangelo had left for his apprentice?
(a) Draw, Antonio..and do not waste time.
(b) Antonio, do as I have done.
(c) Paint, Antonio...and get it done now.
(d) Use your ideas immediately, Antonio.

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

Short Answer Questions

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

2. What body of water did Dillard write near in Washington State?

3. Who once said that '..his firewood warmed him twice because he labored to cut his own'?

4. What did a Dinka believe his own memories and daydreams to be?

5. Where did Dillard forget about a boiling teakettle and burn it?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why does Dillard say that she needed more materials than a pencil and paper in order to write something like a second draft for a thirty-page chapter?

2. What is ludicrous about the tea kettle in the faculty lounge of the university that Dillard wrote in?

3. How does a work in progress turn on its author, according to Dillard?

4. What did writers such as Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Ralph Ellison, and Eudora Welty have in common when learning to write, according to Dillard?

5. Why did the island on Haro Strait haunt Dillard?

6. What did Dillard learn from the local ferryman?

7. Why does Dillard say it makes more sense to write one big book than to write many stories or essays?

8. What was Glenn's story about Ferrar Burn?

9. How does Dillard say that she believes a writer must control his or her own energies in order to work?

10. What was unfortunate about Dillard learning how to split wood correctly?

(see the answer keys)

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