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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. What masterpiece of James Joyce does Gardner suggest typing out for language growth in Chapter 1?
(a) "Ulysses."
(b) "Finnegan's Wake."
(c) "The Dead."
(d) "The Wall."

2. 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.

3. What was Gardner's first wife's name?
(a) Nora.
(b) Emily.
(c) Joan.
(d) Sarah.

4. Which sci-fi author wrote A Canticle for Liebowitz?
(a) Jack Humphries.
(b) Walter M. Miller, Jr.
(c) Kurt Vonnegut.
(d) J.D. Salinger.

5. What is, according to Gardner, the one quality in fiction that cannot be faked?
(a) Honor.
(b) Love.
(c) Strangeness.
(d) Beauty.

Short Answer Questions

1. With what older colleague did Gardner publish an anthology of fiction at Chico College?

2. 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?

3. Gardner writes in Chapter 1 that when the central character is a victim there is no what?

4. What book was Gardner writing when he remembered the altered sense coming over him while in the last chapter?

5. Who is the author of The Turn of the Screw?

Short Essay Questions

1. In Chapter 1, what does Gardner say the most common question of the aspiring writer is to him? What is the response?

2. Who does Gardner refer to as the "best" novelists in Chapter 1? What lesson does he cite of them?

3. Where did Gardner learn his method of writing?

4. What state does good fiction elicit in the reader, according to Gardner?

5. What does Gardner write about showy language in Chapter 1?

6. What does Gardner write of expressing characters' emotions in Chapter 1?

7. What does Gardner relate about the "author's character" in Chapter 1? How does he describe "special intelligence?"

8. What does Gardner remark of the author's sense of observation in Chapter 1?

9. What does Gardner suggest as ways to understand the psychology of characters unlike themselves?

10. What does Gardner remark about theme in Chapter 1?

(see the answer keys)

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