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Cynthia Ozick wrote a novella or long story entitled "Puttermesser and Xanthippe" (in Levitation and later in The Puttermesser Papers). The significance of the latter character's name is that it was that of the wife of a famous Greek philosopher and purportedly the only person who could gainsay him. Who is that philosopher?
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see if you know the answer
| Answered: |
18 times |
| Correct: |
11 times (45.8%) |
| Difficulty: |
medium |
| Incorrect: |
7 times (29.2%) |
| Skipped: |
6 times (25.0%) |
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Of which Cynthia Ozick character do we learn that: "She was also something of a feminist, not crazy, but she resented having 'Miss' put in front of her name; she thought it pointedly discriminatory; she wanted to be a lawyer among lawyers"?
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see if you know the answer
| Answered: |
72 times |
| Correct: |
27 times (14.6%) |
| Difficulty: |
very difficult |
| Incorrect: |
45 times (24.3%) |
| Skipped: |
113 times (61.1%) |
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The main character of Cynthia Ozick's novel, The Messiah of Stockholm, imagines himself to be the son of which East European writer?
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see if you know the answer
| Answered: |
106 times |
| Correct: |
48 times (25.4%) |
| Difficulty: |
difficult |
| Incorrect: |
58 times (30.7%) |
| Skipped: |
83 times (43.9%) |
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Cynthia Ozick's story "Puttermesser Paired" has as its intertext the love relations of a famous 19th-century novelist. In this scene Rupert Rabeeno is reading to his wife-to-be, Ruth Puttermesser:
"She watched him reconstruct Johnny Cross. Johnny Cross was anyhow a puzzlement. No one knew him really. He was expected to be 'deep' and he wasn't. He was handsome and genial and athletic and rich. He was no intellectual, though he worked at it gamely, the same plucky way he chopped down a clump of trees or devotedly smacked at a tennis ball. He was a tremendous swimmer. He wasn't even remotely a writer, but he did turn out one astonishing book -- astonishingly chiefly because Johnny Cross had written it: '__________'s Life.' The title was as obvious and direct as he was. He plugged away at it after she died: it was a genuflection."
Who was the subject of Cross' biography, and his one-time wife?
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see if you know the answer
| Answered: |
65 times |
| Correct: |
28 times (23.0%) |
| Difficulty: |
difficult |
| Incorrect: |
37 times (30.3%) |
| Skipped: |
57 times (46.7%) |
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Cynthia Ozick's inimitable character Ruth Puttermesser dreams of the Garden of Eden as a place where she can eat sweets and read endlessly. Here is what she will read:
"Puttermesser will read non-fiction into eternity; and there is still time for Fiction! Eden is equipped above all with timelessness, so Puttermesser will read at last all of Balzac, all of Dickens, all of Turgenev and Dostoevsky (her mortal self has already read all of _______ and _______); at last Puttermesser will read 'Kristin Lavransdatter' and the stupendous trilogy of Dmitri Merezhkovsky, she will read 'The Magic Mountain' and the whole 'Faerie Queene' and every line of 'The Ring and the Book', she will read a biography of Beatrix Potter and one of Walter Scott in many entrancing volumes and one of Lytton Strachey, at last, at last! In Eden insatiable Puttermesser will be nourished, if not glutted. She will study Roman law, the more arcane varieties of higher mathematics, the nuclear composition of the stars, what happened to the Monophysites, Chinese history, Russian, and Icelandic."
Who are the authors that our learned heroine has already read in toto during her mortal life?
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see if you know the answer
| Answered: |
50 times |
| Correct: |
16 times (16.0%) |
| Difficulty: |
very difficult |
| Incorrect: |
34 times (34.0%) |
| Skipped: |
50 times (50.0%) |
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Finish this statement by John Updike: "Yet, as we look about, could we not say that Henry James has many academic idolaters but few imitators -- Peter Taylor and _________ in their youths are the last I can think of..."
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see if you know the answer
| Answered: |
74 times |
| Correct: |
14 times (11.4%) |
| Difficulty: |
very difficult |
| Incorrect: |
60 times (48.8%) |
| Skipped: |
49 times (39.8%) |
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All of these titles are by the estimable Cynthia Ozick -- which one is NOT a novel but a collection of short stories?
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see if you know the answer
| Answered: |
36 times |
| Correct: |
8 times (12.5%) |
| Difficulty: |
very difficult |
| Incorrect: |
28 times (43.8%) |
| Skipped: |
28 times (43.8%) |
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Which one of these titles by the estimable Cynthia Ozick is NOT a work of fiction, but one of literary criticism?
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see if you know the answer
| Answered: |
33 times |
| Correct: |
22 times (32.4%) |
| Difficulty: |
difficult |
| Incorrect: |
11 times (16.2%) |
| Skipped: |
35 times (51.5%) |
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The character James A'Bair in Cynthia Ozick's Heir to the Glimmering World (aka The Bear Boy) was inspired by the son of which real-life children's writer?
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see if you know the answer
| Answered: |
96 times |
| Correct: |
65 times (33.0%) |
| Difficulty: |
difficult |
| Incorrect: |
31 times (15.7%) |
| Skipped: |
101 times (51.3%) |
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In Cynthia Ozick's remarkable tale, 'Dictation' (in her eponymous collection of 2008) we find Henry James having the following thoughts after reading the first novel of which fellow writer?
"James saw something extraordinary in it, even beyond the robustness of style and subject: he saw shrewdness, he saw fervency, he saw intuition, he saw authority; he saw, in rougher circumstances, humanity. In a way, he saw a psychological simulacrum of himself..."
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see if you know the answer
| Answered: |
35 times |
| Correct: |
13 times (18.1%) |
| Difficulty: |
very difficult |
| Incorrect: |
22 times (30.6%) |
| Skipped: |
37 times (51.4%) |
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Who wrote the extraordinary work of fiction entitled Nazi Literature in the Americas?
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see if you know the answer
| Answered: |
46 times |
| Correct: |
26 times (36.1%) |
| Difficulty: |
difficult |
| Incorrect: |
20 times (27.8%) |
| Skipped: |
26 times (36.1%) |
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Cynthia Ozick's remarkable recent story, "Dictation", revolves around a plot of the secretaries (or, more correctly, amanuenses) of Joseph Conrad and Henry James to write themselves into literary history. There has lately been a spurt of novels dealing with the life of Henry James. Which one of these has as its main character and narrator, Theodora Bosanquet, the last of James' secretaries?
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see if you know the answer
| Answered: |
30 times |
| Correct: |
8 times (11.6%) |
| Difficulty: |
very difficult |
| Incorrect: |
22 times (31.9%) |
| Skipped: |
39 times (56.5%) |
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Cynthia Ozick's tale, Dictation, revolves around Lilian Hallowes, the secretary of Joseph Conrad, and which one of these four secretaries who worked for Henry James during the last two decades of his life?
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see if you know the answer
| Answered: |
25 times |
| Correct: |
15 times (28.8%) |
| Difficulty: |
difficult |
| Incorrect: |
10 times (19.2%) |
| Skipped: |
27 times (51.9%) |
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Who stated this?
"The writer is the man or woman who automatically takes a stance against his or her government. There are so many temptations for American writers to become part of the system and part of the structure that now, more than ever, we have to resist. American writers ought to stand and live in the margins, and be more dangerous."
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see if you know the answer
| Answered: |
42 times |
| Correct: |
15 times (23.4%) |
| Difficulty: |
difficult |
| Incorrect: |
27 times (42.2%) |
| Skipped: |
22 times (34.4%) |
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