Character Creators Trivia

1. Tess Durbeyfield, Angel Clare, Michael Henchard, Jude Fawley. Which Victorian English writer gave us these characters?

From Quiz Who Created Me? #3

Answer: Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy (1840 - 1928). His fictional county of Wessex was a pretty grim place - not for him the sentimental optimism of a Charles Dickens. Tess and Angle Clare come from "Tess of the d'Urbervilles" (1891), Micheal Henchard is "The Mayor of Casterbridge" (1886) and Jude Fawley is "Jude the Obscure" (1895).

From Quiz Who?

Answer: Elizabeth Bennet

Charlotte Lucas features in "Pride & Prejudice". She eventually marries William Collins, a man whose proposal of marriage had been rejected by Charlotte's best friend, Elizabeth Bennet.

From Quiz Favorite Characters

Answer: Lee Child

This character who is a former career military police officer in the U.S. Army. When his clothes need laundering, he simply buys new ones.

From Quiz Who Created Me? #2

Answer: John Steinbeck

Hollywood seems to have an affinity for the novels of John Steinbeck - just a quick check finds movies made from - "The Pearl" (1948), "Of Mice and Men" (at least twice, 1981 and 1992, with the '92 Gary Sinise/John Malkovich version being top-notch), "East of Eden" (1955 with James Dean, and a 1982 mini-series), "Cannery Row" (1982 - a bit oddly done, but with some great bits) "Tortilla Flat" (1942, with Spencer Tracy and Hedy Lamarr), and John Ford's 1940 masterpiece, "The Grapes of Wrath".

From Quiz Who Created Me?

Answer: Evelyn Waugh

Evelyn Waugh (1903 - 1966) is perhaps most famous for "Brideshead Revisited" (1945), but my personal favorite is the World War II trilogy, "Men at Arms" (1952), "Officers and Gentlemen"(1955), and "Unconditional Surrender" (1961). These books follow Guy Crouchback through the war, from "phony war", to the Commandos, the invasion of Crete, Yugoslavia, and back to England. They are both enormously funny and very moving.

From Quiz Name the Writer

Answer: Vainö Linna

All three are found in Linna's great collective epic of the last Finnish-Russian war, "Unknown Soldier" (1954). Waltari, Saarikoski and Tikkanen are other Finnish writers.

From Quiz Who Created Me? #3

Answer: James Patterson

James Patterson (1947 -) is something of a novel-writing powerhouse. He has several book series, four or five of which have more (some many more) than a dozen novels in them. He frequently collaborates with other writers on his books, which one can assume helps in keeping up the prodigious output. In my opinion, his work suffers from what you could call "series fatigue", where, by about the sixth book in a series, anything interesting or original in the characters or their situation has become smoothed down to a generic blandness. He is by no means the only author to which this has happened. Fang is from the "Maximum Ride" series, while Nana Mama and Brianna Stone are from "Alex Cross". Lindsay Boxer is from the "Women's Murder Club" series.

From Quiz Who?

Answer: Philip Pirrip

The orphan Philip Pirrip, nicknamed 'Pip', is the protagonist in "Great Expectations". Pip travels to London to become a gentleman under the assumption that his benefactor is Miss Havisham, and he is shocked when he eventually discovers the truth.

From Quiz Favorite Characters

Answer: Clive Cussler

This hero obviously loves the sea and all its wonders. The hero is married to a member of the US Congress.

From Quiz Who Created Me? #2

Answer: Judy Blume

When Judy Blume started writing in the early seventies, children's books did not often address such topics as divorce, death, racism and sexuality. Blume consistently pushes the boundary of which subjects should be "taboo" in books aimed at children and teens, and she has paid a price for it. Her books are often censored by parent groups, and banned by school libraries. The response of the children themselves, however, is more positive. Judy Blume's books are still very popular, although some are more than thirty years old. She has written a book, "Letters to Judy (what your kids wish they could tell you)" (1986), about some of the letters she has received over the years. Again and again, the children write of how they felt that they were alone with their problems, and what a relief it was to find a book about someone going through the same difficulty.

From Quiz Who Created Me?

Answer: John Irving

John Irving's novels are something like a strip-tease, dancing 'round and 'round the central event, dropping a fact here, an insight there, until finally all is laid bare, and you finally find out what the book is actually about. This is compelling, to some readers; to others, merely irritating.

From Quiz Name the Writer

Answer: Saul Bellow

The gentlemen appear in "The Adventures of Augie March" (1953), "Humboldt's Gift" (1975), "More Die of Heartbreak" (1987), respectively. Bellow was Nobel Laureate in Literature in 1976.

From Quiz Who Created Me? #3

Answer: Lucy Maud Montgomery

Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874 - 1942) was born in Prince Edward Island, where most of her stories are set. "Anne of Green Gables" (1908), the most famous, was successful from the start, and Montgomery just kept on writing her PEI stories until her death. The Cuthberts and Gilbert are from "Anne of Green Gables", while Emily Starr is the main character of a trilogy of her own, starting with "Emily of New Moon".

From Quiz Who?

Answer: Santiago

Santiago is the titular character in Hemingway's Pulitzer Prize winning novel "The Old Man and the Sea". Santiago is considered so unlucky that Manolin's parents insist that he goes fishing with more successful fishermen. Manolin still visits Santiago, though, bringing food and discussing baseball with him.

From Quiz Favorite Characters

Answer: Janet Evanovich

Stephanie has unbelievably bad luck with her cars blowing up, but she always has Lulu as her back-up partner.

From Quiz Who Created Me? #2

Answer: Somerset Maugham

William Somerset Maugham (1874 - 1965) travelled widely throughout his lifetime, and much of his fiction, especially the short stories, is set in the hot and steamy corners of the British Empire. His short stories are in my opinion very good, very atmospheric, often with a twist in the plot. His own opinion of his talents was that he stood "in the very first row of the second-raters" (from his autobiography "The Summing Up" 1938).

From Quiz Who Created Me?

Answer: Jane Duncan

"Jane Duncan" is the pen-name of Elizabeth Jane Cameron (1910 - 1976). When the first novel in her "Friends" series, "My Friends the Miss Boyds", (1959), was accepted by her publisher, she revealed that she had six more finished novels waiting. The first three or four of these novels have such a fresh and engaging tone, that it's impossible not to like them. Further on, things get darker in the life of her heroine Janet Sandison, paralleling the events in Duncan's own life, but by that time, you have come to know and care so much about the characters that you must keep reading. The last of the books "My Friends George and Tom", was published in 1976.

From Quiz Name the Writer

Answer: Knut Hamsun

Heroes of "Mysteries", "Pan" and "Growth of the Soil", the last of which earned him the Nobel Prize. Hamsun was a pioneer of the modern novel, and his heroes - at least in early works - are erratic and distressed figures. Ibsen, Undset and Sandemose are other Norwegian writers.

From Quiz Who?

Answer: T. Lawrence Shannon

Former minister T. Lawrence Shannon is the central character in "The Night of the Iguana". Having earlier been institutionalized with a nervous breakdown after being locked out of his church for describing God as a senile delinquent during a sermon, Shannon is working as a tour guide in Mexico when he is accused of statutory rape with one of his tour group.

From Quiz Favorite Characters

Answer: Agatha Christie

This author wrote many books but this character is definitely one of her most popular.

From Quiz Who Created Me? #2

Answer: Elizabeth Peters

This woman is a very prolific writer. As Elizabeth Peters she writes the Amelia Peabody series, set in Victorian Egypt; the Jacqueline Kirby series, following the adventures of her librarian-turned-romance writer heroine; and the Vicky Bliss series, in which the main character is an art historian. She also has written a good handful of non-series novels. As Barbara Michaels, she has written a long list of what could best be described as modern Gothic romances, with lots of haunted houses and people being possessed by ghosts from the past. And, in her own character, Dr. Mertz is a published Egyptologist.

From Quiz Who Created Me?

Answer: Jack London

Any reader of Jack London won't be surprised to learn that, as a boy, he had a great enthusiasm for dime novels, adventures, and romances of all kinds. He stated that Ouida's "Signa" "had done more to shape his career than any other single influence."

From Quiz Name the Writer

Answer: Kurt Vonnegut

Heroes of "Bluebeard", "Slaughterhouse-Five" and "The Children's Crusade", "A Duty-Dance with Death" and "Jailbird".

From Quiz Who?

Answer: Adela Quested

Adela Quested, a British schoolmistress, is the protagonist in Forster's classic "A Passage to India". She travels to the sub-continent in the days of the Raj to meet Mrs. Moore's son, a possible husband. An assault accusation and the subsequent trial highlight the prejudices and racial tensions of the time.

From Quiz Who Created Me? #2

Answer: Raymond Chandler

Raymond Chandler novels have been made into some of the best film noir classics out of Hollywood - "The Big Sleep" with Humphrey Bogart (1946), "Farewell my Lovely" with Robert Mitchum (1944), and even 1973's "The Long Goodbye", with Elliot Gould. Chandler also wrote or co-wrote the screenplays for other noir classics "Double Indemnity" (1944) "The Blue Dahlia" (1946) and "Strangers on a Train" (1951).

From Quiz Who Created Me?

Answer: John Le Carre

The end of the Cold War put a bit of a crimp in John Le Carre's style, but he was able to find other subject matter, in such books as "The Little Drummer Girl" (1983), and "The Tailor of Panama"(1996).

From Quiz Name the Writer

Answer: Fyodor Dostoyevsky

From "The Idiot", "Crime and Punishment", and "The Gambler". This last novel was, by the way, written in one month in the midst of working with "Crime and Punishment" - Dostoyevsky had betted he could do it..

From Quiz Who?

Answer: Gordon Comstock

Gordon Comstock is sure that his girlfriend (Rosemary) would love him more if he were richer in "Keep the Aspidistra Flying", Orwell's social criticism of society's obsession with money. Julia is Comstock's sister, and it is also the name of Winston Smith's love interest in "1984".

From Quiz Favorite Characters

Answer: David Baldacci

Oliver is a member of The Camel Club which routinely tackles crime in the political center of America.

From Quiz Who Created Me? #2

Answer: Annie Proulx

Annie Proulx' best known novel is "The Shipping News" (1993) which won the National Book Award and the Irish Times Fiction Prize, but in my opinion, 2002's "That Old Ace in the Hole", set in the Texas Panhandle, is just as good a book. Her trademarks are quirky characters, a strong sense of place, and a characteristic stark compassion which underlies all her work.

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Last Updated Nov 16 2024 5:51 AM

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