1,2,4,8, and 9. Are these graded on a curve?
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1,2,4,8, and 9. Are these graded on a curve?
What’s “In,” What’s “Out”?
Have I got a preposition for you! The literary and cinematic works below will invite you in and then show you the way out. (Me, I don't know if I'm coming or going.)
1. What is the title of John McCrae’s most famous poem about World War I?
2. “In Memoriam,” written between 1833-1850 , considered to be one of the greatest elegies in the English language, is a big poem by a big name. Name the poet.
3. What is Truman Capote’s non-fiction novel about two ex-cons and their 1959 murder of a Kansas family?
4. What is the title of Ernest Hemingway’s short story collection (1924) which featured episodes in the life of his young alter ego, Nick Adams?
5. Who wrote Intruder in the Dust and A Light in August, two novels dealing with racism in America’s deep south?
6. Who was the hugely significant figure in American poetry who wrote “Out of the Cradle, Endlessly Rocking”?
7. Name the title of what is considered to be Isak Dinesen’s literary masterpiece and the film adaptation of which was a tour de force for actress Meryl Streep.
8. What is the title of John Sayles’s 1988 movie about the Chicago “Black Sox” scandal? (The cast includes Studs Terkel, who passed away last week, as well as the director himself in the role of Ring Lardner.)
9. Which Shakespearean character screamed “Out, out damned spot!”?
10. Name the 1947 movie considered a film noir masterpiece which also made actor Robert Mitchum “an overnight star.”
Answers
1. “In Flanders Fields” 2. Tennyson 3. In Cold Blood
4. In Our Time
5. William Faulkner 6. Walt Whitman 7. Out of Africa 8. Eight Men Out
9. Lady Macbeth 10. Out of the Past
wow, seven out of ten this week. I got 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 9. :D
Thanks, Auntie.
I got numbers 1, 2, 3, 7, 8, and 9. I had to get number 7 because it played a major role in one of my stories a while back.
I think this is the best I’ve done yet on any of your quizzzes, so I’m a living testament to the fact that your quizzzes can make us smarter.
The answer to question 1 is one of my favorite poems. I’d like to post the poem here since it’s not very long – along with an abbreviated version of some background info that I just found today.
IN FLANDERS FIELDS the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
Abbreviated Background:
After witnessing seventeen days of combat at Ypres during the Great War in 1915, McRae, a Canadian military doctor thought:"I wish I could capture on paper some of what I just saw. At the end of the first day if anyone had told us we had to spend seventeen days there, we would have folded our hands and said it could not have been done."
One death particularly affected McCrae. A young friend and former student, Lieut. Alexis Helmer of Ottawa, had been killed by a shell burst on 2 May 1915. Lieutenant Helmer was buried later that day in the little cemetery outside McCrae's dressing station, and McCrae had performed the funeral ceremony in the absence of the chaplain.
In the nearby cemetery, McCrae could see the wild poppies that sprang up in the ditches in that part of Europe, and he spent twenty minutes of precious rest time scribbling fifteen lines of verse in a notebook.
When McCrae finished, he handed his pad to young soldier nearby, who was moved by what he read, and who then said:
"The poem was an exact description of the scene in front of us both. He used the word blow in that line because the poppies actually were being blown that morning by a gentle east wind. It never occurred to me at that time that it would ever be published. It seemed to me just an exact description of the scene."
3, 5, 7, 8, 9 I stink.
“Thanks” and “Giving”
Because of Thanksgiving, there won't be a soporific Auntie quiz-zzz next week. (Maybe you won't need a substitute sleep-aid between the boring football games and the tryptophan-laden turkey.)
Which brings us to the theme of this week’s snore-fest. The following questions and/or answers each contain some form of the words “thanks” and “giving.”
1. One can find the words of Emma Lazarus (“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free. . .”) on which American monument?
2. What was Bob Hope ’s theme song?
3. The phrase “Thank you, Miss Rosa” resounds through a Neville Brothers song in honor of an ordinary citizen who became an inspiration to the Civil Rights movement. What was her full name?
4. Who wrote the following?
“There’s plenty of boys that will come hankering and gruvelling around when you've got an apple, and beg the core off you, but when they've got one and you beg for the core and remind them how you gave them a core one time, they make a mouth at you and say ‘Thank you’ ‘most to death, but there ain’-a-going to be no core.”
5. You love ‘im, you hate ‘im, or maybe you love to hate ‘im, but which Shakespearean character says lines such as “I am not in the giving vein to-day”?
6. Who was the nineteenth century British poet wrote these lines (from “The Garden of Proserpine”)?
“From too much love of living
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be”
7. What’s the missing word from this rhyming couplet from Coleridge:
“O Lady, we receive what we give
And in our life alone does Nature ____ “(?)
8. Identify the title character from a Shakespeare’s tragedy who complains:
“How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child!”
9. Who was the was the author, songwriter, and cartoonist for Playboy Magazine who wrote the 1964 classic children’s book, The Giving Tree?
10. Douglas Adams (1952-2001) is best known for
The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to Galaxy series of comic SF novels. The title of the fourth volume derives from a message thought to have been left by dolphins. Adams’s fans liked to use this phrase as a substitute for “goodbye.” What was it?
Answers
1. The Statue of Liberty 2. “Thanks for the Memory”
3. Rosa Parks
4. Mark Twain 5. Richard III 6. Swinburne 7. live
8. King Lear
9. Shel Silverstein.
10. So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
man i suck at these!
I only got 2 and 10...and 2 was a guess!
I did pretty good at this one...only missed 5 and 6. Happy Turkey Day Shecky!!
Thanks, Auntie, for putting this quizzz together. I got numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and 8 so I made 50% and don’t have to face a runoff.
I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving, and give yourself a well-deserved rest from these quizzzes, which obviously don’t compose themselves in some sort of automatic mode. There's a lot of work and creativity that goes into these.
And while I have the microphone, I'd like to encourage people to vote in the 2008 Short Story Competition, which has all the best stories from throughout this entire year. Here's where you can find the competing stories and the ballot:
http://www.online-literature.com/for...ad.php?t=39280
We could use more voters here because these stories deserve more attention than they've gotten so far.
Hey, I got 1,2,3,4, 7,9, and 10! Not bad!
I got 1, 3, 6, 7, 8. That's five. But this week was a hard one. ;) Yes, and taking the lead from Dick, we give thanks to our wonderful Anuty for putting these together. I enjoy them :)
The Deep Freeze
Some of the questions are slushily easy; others stiff as the ice on an Adirondack lake. Either way, this week’s quiz will leave you cold. All of the questions and/or answers have something to do with the first month of winter and the final month of the year.
1. Not only does the name of this American poet fit the category, so does his most famous work, “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening.” Who is he?
2. What is the 1982 Saul Bellow novel about a college administrator facing a mid-life crisis in two cities: Chicago and Bucharest?
3. Name the 1983 Lawrence Kasdan movie about aging baby boomers gathering after the suicide of a member of their college crowd. It starred Tom Berenger, Glenn Close, William Hurt, Kevin Kline, and Kevin Costner as the corpse.
4. Which 1940 play by Eugene O’Neill sets takes place entirely within Harry Hope’s saloon?
5. What was the nickname Austrians gave Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden because “he was kept together by the cold, but would melt and disappear as he approached a warmer soil” ?
6. We’re told a “sad” story is best for this time a year in Shakespeare’s 1611 play featuring King Leontes and Queen Hermione and the romantic pair of Florizel and Perdita. What’s the title?
7. What was the title of both the Richard Condon novel and the 1979 movie starring Jeff Bridges and John Houston about the effects of a Presidential assassination upon the victim’s brother fifteen years after the tragedy?
8. Name Maxwell Anderson’s acclaimed verse drama based on the Sacco-Vanzetti case.
9. Which Hemingway short story features a burnt-out writer named Harry, a safari, and a vision of a legendary gigantic leopard?
10. And finally, according to Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind,” if Winter’s here, can (what?) be far behind?
Answers
1. Robert Frost 2. The Dean’s December
3. The Big Chill 4. The Iceman Cometh
5. The Snow King 6. A Winter’s Tale
7. Winter Kills 8. Winterset
9. "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" 10. Spring
Thanks for making the quiz, Auntie. I would have hated to go two weeks without one so I’m ecstatic that you put this one out after your hard-earned Thanksgiving reprieve.
I got numbers 1, 4, 6, 9, and 10 completely right.
On Question 2, I didn’t know what the novel was that dealt with a mid-life crisis in Chicago and Bucharest, but my mother’s parents came over from Bucharest and wound up in Chicago back in 1903 so I hope you’ll give me partial credit for this one even though I really don’t deserve any and maybe you should even take off a few points for my using a run-on sentence like this one. Maybe I'll get a copy of that book from the library.
P.S. Maybe I should confess that I only knew number 9 from having seen the movie, because I never read the actual book. Since you wouldn't have known that without my mentioning it, I'm still claiming full credit for this answer. Please don't tell anyone else that I only saw the movie.
I got 1, 4, 6, and 10. better than the last few rounds i did. :(
One and ten. Terrible. :sick: