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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Chapter 4, Faith.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Hypersensitivity, stubbornness, and what are traits that make one want to be a writer and can also get in the way?
(a) Irritability.
(b) Instability.
(c) Egotism.
(d) Despair.

2. What author does Gardner say was known to arrive at a party and sit for ten minutes or more staring at guests and not answering when people addressed him in Chapter1?
(a) Moliere.
(b) F. Scott Fitzgerald.
(c) Anthony Trollope.
(d) James Joyce.

3. In Chapter 1, Gardner states that "In a literary culture where the very notion of a 'masterpiece' is commonly thought" what?
(a) Impossible.
(b) Barbaric.
(c) Immature.
(d) Dangerous.

4. Where did Raymond Carver move to Chico, California from?
(a) Washington.
(b) Wyoming.
(c) Arkansas.
(d) Connecticut.

5. According to Gardner, most rejected fiction is rejected because it's not what?
(a) Modern enough.
(b) Subversive.
(c) Good.
(d) Symbolic.

Short Answer Questions

1. What author of Over the Edge does Gardner cite in Chapter 1?

2. Where does the manuscript go after the literary editor is finished with it?

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"?

4. Sometimes the writer's desire to be original gets in the way or the need to be superhuman or to overcome what?

5. The two things that keep the common reader turning the pages, according to Gardner are story or what?

(see the answer key)

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