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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. To whose apartment does the unnamed narrator go after he leaves the literary dinner in Part Three?
(a) Alena.
(b) Jon.
(c) Sharon.
(d) Alex.

2. What form of communication does the unnamed narrator use to sporadically communicate with Alex during his residency?
(a) Phone calls.
(b) Skype.
(c) Text messages.
(d) Email.

3. Alena puts the pieces of a shattered sculpture by which artist into the unnamed narrator's hands?
(a) Henri Matisse.
(b) Salvador Dali.
(c) Jeff Koons.
(d) Andy Warhol.

4. The only book the unnamed narrator brings to the residency is a book belonging to which genre?
(a) Autobiography.
(b) Poetry.
(c) Mystery.
(d) Science Fiction.

5. After the art showing, when the unnamed narrator goes to dinner at Cochineal, which character gets interrupted each time he tries to contribute to the conversation?
(a) The unnamed narrator.
(b) The intern.
(c) Monika.
(d) Diane.

Short Answer Questions

1. What object inside the unnamed narrator's pocket does he keep patting as he approaches the hospital?

2. What does the unnamed narrator describe in his comments at Columbia's School of Arts as the "shadow language to Reagan's official narrative processing of the national tragedy" (114)?

3. The unnamed narrator compares the experience of looking at Judd's works with the experience of looking at what other object?

4. When the unnamed narrator attending the private showing of a particular artist's works, he says, "The works felt first and foremost like a" (179) what?

5. What is the only element of the physical world that gives the unnamed narrator a feeling of excitement?

Short Essay Questions

1. What aspect of Walt Whitman's strange autobiography Specimen Days disgusts the unnamed narrator and why?

2. Name three excuses the unnamed narrator uses when people ask to see him during his writers' residency.

3. What is the only low point in the adventure Roberto and the unnamed narrator go on together in Part Three?

4. How does the unnamed narrator end up at a party in Part Four?

5. Why does Alex caution the unnamed narrator not to write about medical issues and what evidence does she use for her argument?

6. How does the unnamed narrator meet Noor?

7. Who is Michael and how does the unnamed narrator meet him?

8. On what adventure does the unnamed narrator take eight-year-old Roberto in Part Three?

9. What mistake does the intern make in Part Four and what similar mistake does the unnamed narrator make?

10. What is "totaled art" (130) and how had Alena acquired some of it prior to the novel's opening?

(see the answer keys)

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