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Oedipa Maas, Pierce Inverarity, and Dr. Hilarius are characters from which of the following works of literature?
Oedipa Maas, Pierce Inverarity, and Dr. Hilarius are some of the main characters in Thomas Pynchon's 1966 novella, The Crying of Lot 49. The story followed Oedipa Maas in particular.
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124, Paul D, Baby Suggs, and Denver are characters in which of the following literary works?
These are characters from Toni Morrison's 1987 novel, Beloved. Set shortly after the American Civil War, the book tells the story of escaped slave Sethe and her daughter Denver.
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This Pulitzer- and Nobel-Prize winning novelist and three-time recipient of the National Book Award wrote such novels as The Adventures of Augie March and Herzog. Who is he?
This is Saul Bellow. In addition to The Adventures of Augie March (1953) and Herzog (1964), he wrote Mr. Sammler's Planet (1970), Seize the Day (1956), and Humboldt's Gift (1975). Bellow had one of the most prolific and successful literary careers of the 20th century. His first novel was released in 1944 and his last in 2000; he won the National Book Award three times in three decades, and was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1976.
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Although best known for the essay collection Notes of a Native Son, this author also wrote an acclaimed semi-autobiographical novel with characters named Sarah, Ruth, Roy, and John. Who is he or she?
This is James Baldwin, whose books include the essay collection Notes of a Native Son (1955), and the novels Giovanni’s Room (1956), Go Tell It On the Mountain (1953)(Baldwin's first novel, a semi-autobiographical work in which the above characters appear), and Just Above My Head (1979). Baldwin also wrote poetry and plays and was concerned with racial, sexual, cultural, religious, and class identities in twentieth-century America.
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A Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by this author concerns the rises and falls in the fortune of a Chinese family, the protagonist Wang Lung, and the aristocratic House of Hwang. Who is the author?
The question refers Pearl S. Buck's 1931 novel The Good Earth. Buck's second novel, and the first book in her The House of Earth trilogy, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932 and considered a key factor in Buck’s receiving the Nobel Prize in 1938. The novel also helped raise American political awareness of, and spur discussion of Asian race relations during the 1930s.
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This Native American author wrote novels and short story collections including Reservation Blues, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. Who is he or she?
The author in question is Sherman Alexie, who grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Washington State. His work includes short stories, novels, poems, screenplays, and films. Reservation Blues (1995) was Alexie's first novel and The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993), a collection of interconnected short fiction, featured a number of shared characters. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian won the National Book Award for Young People's literature in 2007. Alexie is a two time National Book Award winner, and has won the PEN Hemingway, PEN Faulkner, and PEN Malamud awards.
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Death Comes for the Archbishop and My Ántonia are by which American author?
This is Willa Cather, whose Pulitzer Prize-winning fiction focused on life on the American frontier, in addition to her many literary honors, Cather's image was also featured on a stamp. Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) is routinely in the discussion as one of the best "Western Novels" of all time, it details the fictional attempts of a Catholic bishop to establish a diocese in frontier New Mexico. My Ántonia (1918) is one of Cather's most highly regarded works, and the last novel in her Prairie Trilogy (the other two being O Pioneers! (1913) and The Song of the Lark (1915)).
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Which of the following interconnected short story collections features a nameless recovering drug addict as its central narrator?
This is Jesus’ Son, Denis Johnson’s 1992 collection. The book takes its title from the famous Velvet Underground song “Heroin” and discusses addiction in rural America. The collection was adapted into a film of the same name in 1999.
Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles (1950), Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried (1990), Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio (1918), and Amy Bloom's A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You (2000) were all used as alternative answer choices. All of these books are collections of short fiction.
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This author wrote The Naked and the Dead and The Executioner’s Song. Who is he?
This is Norman Mailer, who is also a journalist, an essay writer, and a screenwriter. He had a noted feud with Truman Capote, another of the options listed in the question.
The Naked and the Dead (1948) was Mailer's first novel, published when he was just 25 years old. The Executioner's Song won the 1979 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Mailer's last book was published in 2007, making for an impressive fifty-nine year active publishing career.
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This author’s renowned 1966 book, In Cold Blood, investigates an unsolved quadruple homicide in Kansas. Who is he?
This is Truman Capote’s book. He was a pioneer in the genre of creative nonfiction, which combines the devices of literary fiction with journalistic reporting. His works of fiction include Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948) and Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1958). In addition to being an author Capote was a noted personality in the 1960s and 70s, appearing frequently on late-night talk shows.
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Which American author wrote the darkly comedic World War II novel Catch-22?
Although all of these authors wrote works set during World War II, the writer of Catch-22 (1961)is the Brooklyn-born Joseph Heller. The novel is the source of the common expression "catch-22", which refers to an unsolvable logic puzzle in which two contradictory solutions are offered to a problem.
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Which novel features the characters Holden, Phoebe, Stradlater, and Mr. Antolini?
These characters appear in J.D. Salinger’s 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye.
Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), Leslie Marmon Silko's Almanac of the Dead (1991), Saul Bellow's Seize the Day (1956), and John Horne Burns The Gallery (1947) were all used as alternative options.
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Which of the following novels is about the friendship between two deaf-mute men named John Singer and Spiros Antonapoulous?
The work described is Carson McCullers’ The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, published in 1940 and set in a small town in 1930s Georgia.
Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar(1961), Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), Kate Chopin's The Awakening (1899), and Alice Walker's The Color Purple (1982) were all provided as alternative options.
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This author’s novels include What I Lived For, Black Water, and Blonde. Who is she?
The stunningly prolific Joyce Carol Oates has published more than forty novels since 1963. She has won countless short story awards, in addition to the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and the National Book Award.
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I can remember the time when I used to sleep quietly without workings in my thoughts, whole nights together, but now it is other ways with me. When all are fast about me, and no eye open, but His who ever waketh, my thoughts are upon things past, upon the awful dispensation of the Lord towards us, upon His wonderful power and might, in carrying of us through so many difficulties, in returning us in safety, and suffering none to hurt us. I remember in the night season, how the other day I was in the midst of thousands of enemies, and nothing but death before me. It is then hard work to persuade myself, that ever I should be satisfied with bread again. But now we are fed with the finest of the wheat, and, as I may say, with honey out of the rock. Instead of the husk, we have the fatted calf. The thoughts of these things in the particulars of them, and of the love and goodness of God towards us, make it true of me, what David said of himself, "I watered my Couch with my tears" (Psalm 6.6).
The excerpted passage was written by __________.
This passage comes from Mary Rowlandson's Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, which is one of the best examples of the genre of American literature known as the "captivity narrative." In the text, Rowlandson, a Puritan, recounts her experiences as a captive of Native Americans in New England.
Passage adapted from Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson by Mary Rowlandson (1682)
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We went tiptoeing along a path amongst the trees back towards the end of the widow's garden, stooping down so as the branches wouldn't scrape our heads. When we was passing by the kitchen I fell over a root and made a noise. We scrouched down and laid still. Miss Watson's big slave, named Jim, was setting in the kitchen door; we could see him pretty clear, because there was a light behind him. He got up and stretched his neck out about a minute, listening. Then he says:
“Who dah?”
He listened some more; then he come tiptoeing down and stood right between us; we could a touched him, nearly. Well, likely it was minutes and minutes that there warn't a sound, and we all there so close together. There was a place on my ankle that got to itching, but I dasn't scratch it; and then my ear begun to itch; and next my back, right between my shoulders. Seemed like I'd die if I couldn't scratch. Well, I've noticed that thing plenty times since. If you are with the quality, or at a funeral, or trying to go to sleep when you ain't sleepy—if you are anywheres where it won't do for you to scratch, why you will itch all over in upwards of a thousand places.
The author of the above work also wrote which novel?
The excerpt is taken from Mark Twain’s 1884 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a classic novel that features the adventures of the eponymous narrator and a slave named Jim. Twain also wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, a precursor to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The latter novel in particular deals with themes of slavery and racism in the American South.
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It was about dusk, one evening during the supreme madness of the carnival season, that I encountered my friend. He accosted me with excessive warmth, for he had been drinking much. The man wore motley. He had on a tight-fitting parti-striped dress, and his head was surmounted by the conical cap and bells. I was so pleased to see him, that I thought I should never have done wringing his hand.
I said to him—"My dear Fortunato, you are luckily met. How remarkably well you are looking to-day! But I have received a pipe of what passes for Amontillado, and I have my doubts."
"How?" said he. "Amontillado? A pipe? Impossible! And in the middle of the carnival!"
Who is the author of the above work?
The above paragraphs are taken from the opening of American writer Edgar Allan Poe’s macabre short story “The Cask of Amontillado.” In the story, the narrator seeks revenge upon the hapless, drunk Fortunato by luring him into a cellar under the pretense of inspecting a cask of Amontillado sherry, walling him up, and leaving him to die.
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The Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale bent his head, in silent prayer, as it seemed, and then came forward.
"Hester Prynne," said he, leaning over the balcony and looking down steadfastly into her eyes, "thou hearest what this good man says, and seest the accountability under which I labour. If thou feelest it to be for thy soul's peace, and that thy earthly punishment will thereby be made more effectual to salvation, I charge thee to speak out the name of thy fellow-sinner and fellow-sufferer! Be not silent from any mistaken pity and tenderness for him; for, believe me, Hester, though he were to step down from a high place, and stand there beside thee, on thy pedestal of shame, yet better were it so than to hide a guilty heart through life. What can thy silence do for him, except it tempt him—yea, compel him, as it were—to add hypocrisy to sin? Heaven hath granted thee an open ignominy, that thereby thou mayest work out an open triumph over the evil within thee and the sorrow without. Take heed how thou deniest to him—who, perchance, hath not the courage to grasp it for himself—the bitter, but wholesome, cup that is now presented to thy lips!"
Who wrote the above passage?
The excerpted passage mentions two central characters in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s famous novel about morality and hypocrisy, The Scarlet Letter. Written in 1850, the novel concerns an illicit love affair and pregnancy between the married Hester Prynne and the Reverend Dimmesdale in a seventeenth-century New England town.
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It was on his grave, my friends, that I resolved, before God, that I would never own another slave, while it is possible to free him; that nobody, through me, should ever run the risk of being parted from home and friends, and dying on a lonely plantation, as he died. So, when you rejoice in your freedom, think that you owe it to that good old soul, and pay it back in kindness to his wife and children. Think of your freedom, every time you see Uncle Tom’s Cabin; and let it be a memorial to put you all in mind to follow in his steps, and be as honest and faithful and Christian as he was.
The above passage is from a novel by which nineteenth-century reformer?
As alluded to in the passage, this work is Uncle Tom’s Cabin—specifically, an excerpt from a slaveowner’s speech to his slaves as he sets them free. The novel was published in 1852, by Harriet Beecher Stowe, an American abolitionist and sister of the preacher Henry Ward Beecher.
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"When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only. I lived there two years and two months. At present I am a sojourner in civilized life again."
"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things."
The above two paragraphs are excerpted from a work by which author?
The above lines are taken from American transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau’s famous Walden, a work published in 1854 and set in the woods of Massachusetts. The work sings the praises of simple living and reflects upon human nature, independence, spirituality, and wilderness survival. (It is not to be confused with work by Ralph Waldo Emerson, who also owned property near Thoreau’s cabin on Walden Pond).
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