Daniel Quinn, "The Holy" Trivia Quiz

Answer: Boxer

Howard used to be a boxer in his youth, hence his intimidating physical appearance. He is described as a big man with a smashed-up face.

Howard was drafted into the military, but we are never told what branch or what rank. His brother-in-law Simon was the lawyer - he and Howard had originally gone into business together as private detectives until Simon became a lawyer. Howard only ever played chess for fun. He originally joins the chess club to improve his chess play, but he soon learns that he's not very good at it and prefers to just watch others play.

Answer: All of these

The first two incidents (when Tim was kindergarten-age) occur in the prologue. The last one (at age 12) occurs in Chapter 7, just a couple months before his father, David, takes off.

Answer: Hayes Peterson

The morning after he accepts the job from Aaron, he calls an old friend of his, Hayes Peterson, who works for a newspaper. They meet for lunch and Howard asks him for the name of a psychic. Peterson gives him the name of Denise Purcell, a tarot card reader, whom he feels is not a phony.

Denise, in turn, puts Howard in touch with a young clairvoyant man, Richard Holloway.

Joel Bailey is a Satanist whom Howard tracks down after reading an old article in the paper.

Howard also consults with a rabbi, some people at the Catholic archdiocese of Chicago, and Father White, the editor of a religious publication.

Answer: They are pink with little green antennae.

Richard attempts to explain to Howard what "yoo hoos" are. Apparently he sees them everywhere and is able to distinguish them from humans. At one point, he gets frustrated with Howard's questions and he says, "What do you think I'm going to say? That they're pink with little green antennae growing out of their heads?"

All of the other things above are true, according to Richard. They look just like regular people, except they dress a little differently and they have a different "resonance" to Richard.

Richard calls them "yoo hoos" because they are the type of people you would not want to say "yoo-hoo" to. He is afraid to talk to them.

Answer: A sheep is sacrificed.

No animals are sacrificed during the ceremony.

Howard and the other initiate, Leslie, are dressed in sumptuous robes and are given an herbal hallucinogenic tea and Benedictine. Joel Bailey, who calls himself Verdelet during the ceremony, makes announcements and gives instructions. Delices is a beautiful young woman who is a priestess assisting with the rite.

The premise of the rite appears to be to break down misconceptions about God and Satan, and to allow Howard and Leslie to let go of their inhibitions.

Howard starts off rather nervous and self-conscious, but by the end of the rite he is very relaxed and seems to have dropped some of his hang-ups.

Answer: What you do not know yourself, you cannot teach another.

This statement is one that Bob Gaines made during a speech at an educational conference when David first met him. This is his way of telling Bob that he just can't explain why he needs to leave.

The other three quotes are from Daniel Quinn's other books, namely "Ishmael" and "The Story of B".

Answer: All of these

When Ellen accidentally leaves Tim behind at the gas station, it is like a comedy of errors. Ellen tells the Chicago police that her son is missing, while Howard, who finds the boy, assumes that Ellen would have called her local police in Indiana.

Frank Orsini, who gives Tim a ride to the Edgewater Beach Hotel Yacht Club, tells Tim that they need to lie to the police and claim that he is Tim's father, because he fears that otherwise the police would accuse him of corrupting the morals of a minor by bringing him to a bar. (We later find out that Orsini is one of the "yoo hoos" or "those people", whose mission is to keep Tim separated from Ellen.)

Even though the book was published in 2002 and appears to take place during modern times, the Kennesey home does not have an answering machine, and no one has a cell phone or voice mail. Howard calls the Kennesey home repeatedly to tell Ellen that Tim is with him, but there is no answer.

Answer: A certain road that leads nowhere.

Twenty years earlier, David had actually begun his quest to find whatever he is looking for now. He is driving around Ohio with his best friend, Gil Bingaman. He tells his buddy that "There is a road. A certain road. A road that goes nowhere."

He actually finds this road and sees a woman standing alone. David leaves the car and tries to follow the woman, while Gil tries to prevent him. He watches the woman for about an hour, until she walks away, and he then goes back to the car where is friend Gil is waiting. He is never able to find that road again.

We do learn that David was a big fan of "The Odyssey" when he was younger, but he never specifically mentions wanting to learn Greek. David's journey appears to parallel "The Odyssey" in many ways. He has a 20-year journey, as did Odysseus. He has a wife and son, just like Odysseus. But is Ellen his patient, faithful wife, or is Andrea?

Answer: He murders two drug dealers and their guard dog.

David has quite an adventure once he hits the road. He picks up two Hispanic hitchhikers, a man and boy, who tell him that he should go to Las Vegas because he has nine strokes of luck. They tell him that once his luck runs out, he will no longer smell bad. Then he falls asleep and they strand his car in the mountains.

David wakes up to find his car stuck on a hill in the Rockies. He wanders around trying to stay warm and find other people, when he stumbles upon a mysterious town that is all done up like an old Wild West town in the movies, complete with a saloon, bordello, etc. He becomes aware that something supernatural is going on.

He is pursued out of the town by Mike, who is a type of zombie corpse (or human dog). Luckily he makes it back to his car and spends the rest of the night there.

The next morning, he wanders off and is found by Robbie and his pit bull, Beast, who are involved in some sort of illegal operation up in the mountains. Robbie brings him to the house where he meets Harvey, Robbie's co-worker. They decide that they need to hold David prisoner overnight until Charles, the head of their operation, shows up and tells them what to do with David.

That night, David overhears a big commotion and screams in the house. When he gets loose the next morning, he finds everyone slaughtered and blood all over. We later learn that Mike did the killing. (Mike does not kill the dog though.)

David leaves the house and runs into Charles, who obviously thinks David did the killing. David holds Robbie's gun to Charles's head and takes his Corvette.

Answer: All of these

Two men, claiming to be Chicago police detectives Wolf and Goodman, give Ellen false information about David's whereabouts. They kidnap her, take her to Colorado, and then disappear. They leave behind a newspaper clipping about David's car being found up in the mountains.

Ellen rents a car and heads over to Wolcott, Colorado, to track down this lead. She hires Felipe Martinez, a young boy, as her mountain guide.

Felipe leads her to the car and Ellen sends him away so she can be alone. Felipe's mother sends him back to keep an eye on Ellen. Out of the blue, Beast (the dead drug dealer Robbie's dog) charges Ellen and means to kill her. At the last moment, he changes direction and kills Felipe instead.

Ellen feels terrible about this and stays in town for Felipe's funeral. We later learn that this was all planned by Pablo and Andrea and their people.

Answer: Beating Andrea at pool.

David is given several tests by Andrea and the others, but the game of pool is not one of them; it appears to be just for fun, and probably meant to distract David while Dudley Case is tying up Marianne in David's room.

In Chapter 44, while David is on his deathbed, John Dee sits at his bedside and explains to him what the tests were and what he should have done differently. Basically, they wanted David to react in any way except the way that boring David Kennesy of Runnell, Indiana, would react.

David refused to think outside the box and instead reacted conventionally to all the test situations. Instead of joining Andrea and Marianne in the rock-throwing, he acted shocked. Instead of giving into his desire for Marianne, he untied her. Instead of giving Mike a countermanding order (like a dog), he killed Mike with a rake.

Because he did not pass the tests and refused to change his way of thinking, John Dee tells David he is dying and it's too late to save him. "Changed minds" is a big theme in much of Daniel Quinn's writing.

Answer: Both of these

Both of these characters, and others, seem to pop up all over the place, sometimes under different names and forms.

Pablo, for example, appears to David, Howard and Aaron as a dark man. He also appears to Howard in a dream as a black dog. To Tim, he once appeared as a man with horns.

We are first introduced to the Navajo character as Horse Killer, whom David first meets in the Old West town. He then meets him again at Andrea's place, where he is known as Dudley Case.

Wolf and Goodman also appear more than once. Howard first encounters them in the portal in Ada's sideboard, and to Ellen they appear as police detectives.

John Dee (perhaps not coincidentally named after the Elizabethan/Renaissance visionary) appears both in the Edgewater Beach Hotel Yacht Club bar and in Andrea's house in Taos.

The Hispanic hitchhikers pop up in different places, and so does Mike.

Answer: Through a portal in Ada's sideboard.

Howard hears a phone ringing one night and discovers that it is coming from a door behind Ada's old sideboard. He pushes the sideboard out of the way and goes through the door.

On the other side of the door is his and Ada's old apartment from when they were first married. Ada, who is still alive on this side of the portal, talks to an incredulous Howard and gives him some advice and tasks to do.

Later on when Howard goes to Taos, Andrea tells Howard that she can teach him how to open that door at will. Howard refuses.

Answer: Our culture is destroying life on this planet.

In Chapter 53, Pablo crashes the meeting between Aaron and Howard. Pablo dispels any misconceptions they might have about his kind. He says, "We can't hear people's thoughts [...] like the God of your scripture".

Aaron asks if his kind are spirits. Pablo answers, "What is a spirit?"

He also says that his kind don't consider themselves gods, even though at certain points in history they were worshiped as gods. Pablo says, "It meant nothing more to us than a new game that we were happy to play. We didn't know what a god is any more than we know what a spirit is."

The theme of our civilization destroying the planet is a common one in Quinn's books. Here, Pablo tells Aaron and Howard: "For the first time in our long history, we have an enemy. This enemy is the vast machine the people of your culture have constructed to destroy the life of this planet."

Answer: He goes outside to play ball with his friends.

The book ends with Tim back in Runnell, Indiana, after turning down the opportunity to stay in Taos with Andrea and Pablo.

He gets a call from his friend asking him to come outside and play baseball. He leaves his mom a note and runs out the door.

The last line in the book is a voice in Tim's head saying, "We'll wait for you, Tim. Not forever. But we'll wait."