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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Chapter 1, The Writer's Nature, Pages 34-72.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What author of Over the Edge does Gardner cite in Chapter 1?
(a) James Joyce.
(b) Harlan Ellison.
(c) Kurt Vonnegut.
(d) Franz Kafka.

2. What does Gardner say "breeds success" in Chapter 1?
(a) Connections.
(b) Persistence.
(c) Dedication.
(d) Success.

3. Of whose writing does Gardner say that no reader can doubt the impulse to capture real life, "the special quality of country-Welsh craziness"?
(a) Dylan Thomas.
(b) Samuel Beckett.
(c) Shakespeare.
(d) John Updike.

4. What psychologist suggests that Jack and the Beanstalk is about penis envy?
(a) Carl Jung.
(b) Sigmund Freud.
(c) Madison Thomas.
(d) Bruno Bettelheim.

5. 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) Nietzsche.
(d) Plato.

Short Answer Questions

1. In Chapter 1, Gardner states that "In a literary culture where the very notion of a 'masterpiece' is commonly thought" what?

2. Which author does Gardner state had "gazelle eyes" which dominated the room in Chapter 1?

3. What does Gardner state in Chapter 1 that we call a writer who cares more for language than the other elements of fiction?

4. To whose poetry and prose had Gardner made allusions to in the novel Grendel?

5. Gardner states that in the works of Shakespeare, language always serves character and what?

(see the answer key)

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