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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Chapter 1, The Writer's Nature, Pages 1-34.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Who wrote Finnegan's Wake?
(a) Joyce.
(b) Flaubert.
(c) Nabokov.
(d) Robbe-Grillet.

2. What is one of the philosophers who has maintained that words inevitably distance us from the brute existence, according to Gardner in Chapter 1?
(a) Socrates.
(b) Kierkegaard.
(c) Plato.
(d) Nietzsche.

3. Gardner notes in Chapter 1 that Mercutio's madness is fantastic and what?
(a) Unbalanced.
(b) Justified.
(c) Phantasmic.
(d) Ironic.

4. Who wrote Sister Carrie and An American Tragedy?
(a) William Faulkner.
(b) Theodore Dreiser.
(c) Raymond Carver.
(d) Ernest Hemingway.

5. What does Gardner state in Chapter 1 that we call a writer who cares more for language than the other elements of fiction?
(a) Stylized.
(b) Tedious.
(c) Mannered.
(d) Bad.

Short Answer Questions

1. Who is one of the writers Gardner notes in Chapter 1 as having both a fine ear for language and also a fascination with the materials?

2. What is the honest answer to the question most young writer's ask of "Do I have what it takes to be a writer?" according to Gardner?

3. What does Gardner say "breeds success" in Chapter 1?

4. In Chapter 1, Gardner writes that one is unable to write for everyone, "try to win the audience both of Saul Bellow and" whom?

5. What masterpiece of James Joyce does Gardner suggest typing out for language growth in Chapter 1?

(see the answer key)

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