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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. During the unnamed narrator's residency, he must have what objects mailed to his temporary address in Texas?
(a) Tax forms.
(b) His agent's notes.
(c) Literary contracts.
(d) Medications.

2. To what hospital does the unnamed narrator go at the beginning of Part Three?
(a) New-York Presbyterian Hospital.
(b) Kaiser-Permanente Hospital.
(c) St. Christopher Hospital.
(d) El Camino Hospital.

3. The unnamed narrator must leave in the middle of Noor's story one day during their shift to check if which item is in stock?
(a) Figs.
(b) Prunes.
(c) Dried mangoes.
(d) Artichokes.

4. The unnamed narrator compares the experience of looking at Judd's works with the experience of looking at what other object?
(a) The Grand Canyon.
(b) The Holy Grail.
(c) Stonehenge.
(d) The third eye.

5. What percentage of the unnamed narrator's bill at the hospital in Part Three is covered by his insurance?
(a) 50.
(b) 70.
(c) 20.
(d) 0.

Short Answer Questions

1. How many years before narrative present did Noor's father die of a heart attack?

2. At which airport is the unnamed narrator picked up by "Michael, the caretaker of the residency houses" (163)?

3. What word does the unnamed narrator use to describe Alena's fourth-floor apartment?

4. What action does the intern take at the party without seeming to realize he is doing it?

5. The unnamed narrator states that "the most riveting and disturbing and particular passages" of his one book "are about" (166) which topic?

Short Essay Questions

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

2. What is the unnamed narrator's specific reason for feeling the way he does about the totaled art?

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

4. The unnamed narrator finds himself working diligently in Texas, but "on the wrong thing" (170). What other piece does he work on instead?

5. How does the unnamed narrator's usual routine change during his writers' residency?

6. For what purpose does the unnamed narrator visit the seventh floor of New-York Presbyterian Hospital at the beginning of Part Three?

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

8. How does Lerner use irony to portray the scene of the party depicted in Part Four?

9. What distinction does the unnamed narrator make between his requirements for reading conditions and his requirements for writing conditions?

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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