A Remembrance of Books Past Trivia Quiz

Answer: Morton Thompson

I loved this book as I have always had a fascination with the study of medicine. I also loved its setting which begins in the early 20th century, when the protagonist, young Lucas Marsh, accompanies the local doctor in his buggy as he makes house-calls. The love of the profession of medicine corrupts Lucas's character as he uses anyone and anything to be a successful doctor. One of the other reasons I included this novel is that it depicts an era in medicine which is not familiar today. House calls anyone?

Answer: Herman Wouk

Here is another of my favorites which has left an indelible stamp on my mind not just from reading the novel but also from seeing the movie. Who can ever forget Humphrey Bogart as Captain Queeg?
In researching this novel, I learned a new grammatical term, "anadiplosis". Anadiplosis in English grammar is a rhetorical device that uses repetition of a word or phrase. (Look! I just used it).
This line from "The Caine Mutiny" is given as an example of anadiplosis, and is said by Captain Queeg to his crew: "Aboard my ship excellent performance is standard. Standard performance is sub-standard. Sub-standard performance is not permitted to exist".

Answer: Susan Howatch

Susan Howatch, who had previously written family-saga type novels, turned to a new form of writing which was religious and philosophical in content. Bewildered by her unhappiness in the face of literary success and material riches, she eventually found solace in the Anglo-Christian religion. This epiphany was triggered by her fascination with the cathedral in Salisbury,England. Researching the cathedral and investigating the Anglo-Christian beliefs brought her full circle to faith.
"Glittering Images" and the five subsequent books in this series outline the history of the Anglo-Christian Church of England. Three of the books are set in the era from the 1930s through to the end of WWII; the other three are concentrated in the 1960s.
In each book, the principal character has "a fatal flaw" which is overcome by a dramatic and interesting understanding of themselves. This usually occurs through a family, church and/or professional crisis. My favorite character is Jonathan Darrow who we get to know in the second book of the series, "Glamorous Powers". Jon's fatal flaw of pride in his mystical powers so sadly disturbs his life of truth, love, and goodness.

Answer: John Le Carre

"Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy " is my favorite book of all of John Le Carre's spy novels. Each novel features George Smiley, some less focused on him than others. George is recalled to service to ferret out the mole who is in the Agency. Having known George through the three novels previous to "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy", I liked this one best.

It describes the turmoil of being human and the dilemma of the ruthlessness necessary to perform his duties as a special agent. This part of George's character development is more detailed than in Le Carre's other books. Spy novels to me, for the most part, do not have the character development that John Le Carre has drawn of George Smiley. One of my other favorite spy novels is Ken Follets's, "The Eye of the Needle".

In this book the fascination of the evil spy captures the reader. Imagine George Smiley meeting Henry Faber from "The Eye of the Needle"!

Answer: Theodore Dreiser

The movie "A Place in the Sun", starring Elizabeth Taylor, Montgomery Clift and Shelley Winters, is an adaptation of Theodore Dreiser's "An American Tragedy", set in the early 1920s. Although the movie showed some of the family background of the protagonist, Clyde Griffiths (renamed to George Eastman, and played by Montgomery Clift), the movie did not concentrate as much on the social conditions of the time.

The Grffiths family was an impoverished, immigrant, ethnic and religious family. The book is haunting in its description of the slow degradation and moral turpitude to which Clyde descends.

The horror and the sadness of the conversations between Mother and son while Clyde is on death row for the murder of his pregnant factory co-worker girlfriend makes your heart cry. An unforgettable story and one of my all time favorites!

Answer: Morton Thompson

Having said I have an affinity for the study of medicine, you can realize this by noting I have two books in this quiz by the same author, Morton Thompson. However, this book, a fictional biography of Dr. Joseph Semmelweis, a Hungarian physician practicing in a large hospital in Vienna, has a main character altogether different from Lucas Marsh M.D. We meet Lucas Marsh M.D.in the book "Not as a Stranger". Dr. Semmelweiss has no aspirations to become known as the best and most famous doctor in Hungary.

Instead, he is focused on the huge number of deaths experienced by hospitalized women from puerperal fever usually stemming from giving birth. Experimenting, he found that washing his hands with a chlorinated lime solution before examining and delivering women's babies led toa greatly reduced death toll.

This book was full of such frustration and sadness. How could anyone refuse to do such a simple thing as to wash their hands? Eventually Dr. Semmelweiss is discharged from the hospital, and made persona non grata in the medical field.

He finds work in a small private hospital where the death toll for women giving birth was 0%. Six of Semmelweiss's students returned to their respective cities bringing the results of Dr. Semmelweiss's work to other medical practitioners. One of the papers having been delivered to a doctor in Edinburgh, Scotland, it is hinted that Joseph Lister, the Father of Antiseptics, was influenced by it.

Answer: Christopher Moore

"Lamb", by Christopher Moore, made me laugh aloud throughout the entire story.
To some it may be irreverent, to others reverently irreverent. The subject of this book, the fictional life of Christ told by his best friend, Biff, does expose the readers to the tenets of other religions, such as Buddhism. For myself, rather than interpret this book I would like to place here a poem by Christopher Moore about his book "Lamb":
"If you have come to these pages for laughter, may you find it.
If you are here to be offended, may your ire rise and your blood boil.
If you seek an adventure, may this song sing you away to blissful escape.
If you need to test or confirm your beliefs, may you reach comfortable conclusions.
All books reveal perfection, by what they are or what they are not.
May you find that which you seek, in these pages or outside them.
May you find perfection, and know it by name."
- Christopher Moore ("Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood")

Answer: James Jones

James Jones took the title of his book from a poem by Rudyard Kipling, "Gentlemen Rankers":
"Gentlemen-rankers out on a spree,
Damned from here to Eternity,
God ha' mercy on such as we,
Baa! Yah! Bah!"
This is a story of social and military command set in Hawaii just a few months before the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Jones drew his characters from his own experience as a soldier stationed in Hawaii during World War II. The life style and interactions of the men stationed in fictional Fort Schofield were as alive and realistic an account of the military as though you were there. Again, this is another book which was made into a movie. The most popular movie scene talked about is the kissing scene on the beach. However,from the movie and the book, my most vivid memory is of Prewitt (Montgomery Cliff), who in the solitude of sunset, played taps on his bugle to commemorate the death of his good friend, Maggio (Frank Sinatra).

Answer: Upton Sinclair

With the publishing of "The Jungle" in 1906 by Upton Sinclair, his expose of the meat-packing industry did not re-make the world as he hoped to do with his socialist programs. Sinclair did, though, through the actions of President Theodore Roosevelt, manage by revealing the horror of what was in his book, to have federal inspection standards for meat.

A second effect was that of Congress enacting the Food and Drug Administration into law. Teddy Roosevelt after reading the book is said to have popularized the term "muckraker", which is borrowed from Paul Bunyan's book, "Pilgrim's Progress".

Answer: Ayn Rand

I waded through this book in anticipation of finding out, "Who is John Galt?". I read almost three-fourths of it to find John Galt. Ayn Rand describes John Galt as a creator, inventor, philosopher, a representation of the human mind. In thinking about this I remembered this line from John Milton's "Paradise Lost":
"The mind is its own place,and in itself
Can make a heaven of Hell, a hell of Heaven"
I am not a philosopher as you can tell.