Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts
1. This novel (published in 1939) was the author's debut novel, although he was already in his fifties and had written short stories for pulp magazines. It was the first of a series for the lead character, a man with a roguish charm.
Which novel starts with the following lines?
"It was about eleven o'clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my powder-blue suit, black brogues, black wool socks with dark blue clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn't care who knew it."
2. This novel (published in 1954) tells the tale of a war veteran who is bent on preaching atheism in the Southern town of Taukinham. The author only wrote two novels, but many short stories, before losing the battle with lupus in 1964 and dying aged just 39.
Which novel starts with the following lines?
"Hazel Motes sat at a forward angle on the green plush train seat, looking one minute at the window as if he might want to jump out of it, and the next down the aisle at the other end of the car."
3. This novel (published in 1979) is the first in a series narrated by the fictional character Nathan Zuckerman, who is visiting his literary hero (E.I. Lonoff) in his home. Whilst there he meets Amy Bellette, who he thinks is Anne Frank.
Which novel starts with the following lines?
"It was the last daylight hour of a December afternoon more than twenty years ago - I was twenty-three, writing and publishing my first short stories, and like many a Bildungsroman hero before me, already contemplating my own massive Bildungsroman - when I arrived at his hideaway to meet the great man."
4. This novel (published in 1900) tells the tale of a young country girl who moves to the city. Once there she sees the way to success is easier through illicit affairs with men rather than hard graft. It was condemned as immoral at the time of its publication.
Which novel starts with the following lines?
"When Caroline Meeber boarded the afternoon train for Chicago, her total outfit consisted of a small trunk, a cheap imitation alligator-skin satchel, a small lunch in a paper box, and a yellow leather snap purse, containing her ticket, a scrap of paper with her sister's address in Van Buren Street, and four dollars in money. It was August 1899. She was eighteen years of age, bright, timid, and full of the illusions of ignorance and youth."
5. This semi-autobiographical novel (published in 1982), mostly set in Los Angeles, takes us through the pain of being a teenager who is hopeless at sports, gruesome (and ineffectual) treatment for acne, and the strained relations with an abusive father. The title is a pun on a very famous American novel of the same era, and the author's taste for alcohol.
Which novel starts with the following lines?
"The first thing I remember is being under something. It was a table, I saw a table leg, I saw the legs of the people, and a portion of the tablecloth hanging down. It was dark under there, I liked being under there. It must have been in Germany. I must have been between one and two years old. It was 1922. I felt good under the table. Nobody seemed to know I was there."
6. This novel (published in 1960) is the first of a series following the exploits of Harry Angstrom, a disgruntled husband and father in his twenties who had dreamed of becoming a basketball star but has ended up selling kitchen gadgets.
Which novel starts with the following lines?
"Boys are playing basketball around a telegraph pole with a blackboard bolted to it. Legs, shouts. The scrape and snap of Keds on loose alley pebbles seems to catapult their voices high into the moist March air blue above the wires."
7. This novel (published in 1956) was the Canadian-born author's fourth, and although it's highly-rated by many, it is overshadowed by its picaresque predecessor. It is a day in the life of an ex-door-to-door salesman whose poor finances have got the better of him. His father is unbending in his refusal to help, his estranged money-grabbing wife won't let up, and he is led astray on the stock market.
Which novel starts with the following lines?
"When it came to concealing his troubles, Tommy Wilhelm was not less capable than the next fellow. So at least he thought, and there was a certain amount of evidence to back him up. He had once been an actor - no not quite, an extra - and he knew what acting should be. Also, he was smoking a cigar, and when a man is smoking a cigar, wearing a hat, he has an advantage; it's harder to find out how he feels."
8. This novel (published in 1939) is part of the series "The Bandini Quartet". It deals with an impoverished writer living in Los Angeles and his ill-fated love affair with a local waitress, Camilla Lopez. The title was borrowed from a line in a Knut Hamsun novel.
Which novel starts with the following lines?
"One night I was sitting on the bed in my hotel room on Bunker Hill, down in the very middle of Los Angeles. It was an important night in my life, because I had to make a decision about the hotel. Either I paid up or I got out: that was what the note said, the note the landlady had put under the door. A great problem, deserving acute attention. I solved it by turning out the lights and going to bed."
9. This novel (published in 1964) was described by a British judge as "a book which dealt with homosexuality, prostitution, drug-taking and sexual perversion" at an obscenity trial its publishers were put through. It was made into a film in 1989. Its author also wrote "Requiem for a Dream".
Which novel starts with the following lines?
"They sprawled along the counter and on the chairs. Another night. Another drag of a night in the Greeks, a beatup all night diner near the Brooklyn Armybase. Once in a while a doggie or seaman came in for a hamburger and played the jukebox. But they usually played some goddam hillbilly record. "
10. No clues for this one.
Which novel (published in 1851) starts with the following lines?
"Call me Ishmael. Some years ago - never mind how long precisely - having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation."
Source: Author
thula2
This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor
agony before going online.
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