Got Your Nose! Trivia Quiz

Answer: Nikolai Gogol

"The Nose" is a story in three parts. In the first section, the barber Yaklovevich finds a human nose in his loaf of bread. Fortunately, he recognizes the nose's owner: a low-ranking civil servant named Kovalyov. Yaklovevich attempts to rid himself of the appendage by throwing it into the Neva River, but he is caught by the police and apprehended. The scene shifts to Kovalyov, who is instantly preoccupied by the loss of his nose. He encounters the nose, dressed up as a uniformed gentleman in the State Council, but is too afraid of the higher-ranking official to seize the appendage. The nose is finally trapped and captured, but it refuses to reattach to Kovalyov's face; the man believes he has been cursed, and attempts to amend it, but fails. Stories spread about The Nose. Suddenly, two weeks after it went missing, the Nose reattaches itself to Kovalyov's face one morning, no one the wiser for a reason.

Despite the ridiculousness of Gogol's story, his other works are similarly farcical. In another short story, "The Overcoat", a man named Akaky Akakievich saves money for months to buy the titular jacket, before he is mugged and killed with it on. In "The Inspector-General," a play, the Khelestakov comes to a small Russian village and is mistaken for a real government inspector, causing the town to treat him with utmost, undeserved respect. In Gogol's masterpiece, an unfinished novel titled "Dead Souls," Chichikov attempts to purchase dead serfs who still counted from previous censuses from Russian landowners.

Answer: A Tale of Two Cities

Charles Dickens' masterpiece of historical fiction, "A Tale of Two Cities," is a monumental testament to the French Revolution. In Book One, Jarvis Lorry meets Lucie Manette travelling on his way into France. Lorry's goal, in fact, was to rescue Lucie's father Alexandre from the Bastille, and he recruits Lucie's help to do it. The two travelers meet Monsieur and Madame Defarge, revolutionaries in Paris who were acquainted with Manette before he was imprisoned. Now, Manette has gone crazy living in the Bastille, and resorts to mindlessly making shoes, every day. Lucie wakes him from his stupor, and they return to London.

Five years later, the scene shifts to a trial in London, where two British spies accuse Charles Darnay of treason. Darnay is acquitted when a witness cannot tell the difference between him and a miraculous look-a-like man named Sydney Carton at the trial. Darnay returns to France, to a cruel Marquis who kills a peasant child. The Marquis is murdered in his sleep by an awakening rebellion. Darnay, sympathetic to the rising, returns to England to marry Lucie Manette. He does so, but is forced to reveal his aristocratic background, which unhinges Mr. Manette once more. Lucie turns down an offer of marriage from Sydney Carton, who loves her too.

The revolution in France succeeds in toppling the Bastille, led by the Defarges. Darnay is lured back to France by an old servant of his father's, but is trapped there and imprisoned by the revolutionaries, angry at the old aristocracy. The Defarges accuse Darnay of being sympathetic to the old regime and have him put on trial for execution by guillotine. Sydney Carton takes Darnay's place out of love for Lucie. The novel ends with Carton's immortal last line: "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known."

Answer: Francois Rabelais

The "author" of "Gargantua and Pantagruel" is the book's very first joke: "Alcofribas Nasier" is in fact an anagram of the name of the true author, Francois Rabelais. The series centers around two giants: Gargantua and his son Pantagruel, who travel around a grossly scatological, violent, and often outrageously comical world.

They also meet Panurge, a friend who plays a central role in the later parts of the series. For example, at the novel's end, Panurge travels to the Oracle of the Holy Bottle, to ask whether or not he should marry in an episode teeming with religious allusions.

The satirical, sprawling work offers philosophical explanations for education and for the role of faith. "Gargantua and Pantagruel" can perhaps be compared to "Gulliver's Travels" in its plot, but it is far less structured, and in many ways, far funnier.

Answer: JD Salinger

JD Salinger, a famous recluse, collected many of his best-known short stories in the unimaginatively-titled collection "Nine Stories." Among these are "For Esme, With Love and Squalor", "The Laughing Man", and "A Perfect Day for Bananafish". The last of these is a narrative about Seymour Glass, a mentally-damaged war veteran, who commits suicide while on vacation with his wife.

Of course, Salinger is best-known for his coming-of-age novel "The Catcher in the Rye," with its immortal protagonist Holden Caulfield. Holden, a prototypical anti-establishment teenager, is nonetheless terrified of growing up and wishes to remain a sincere child forever. He drops out of school and wanders around New York City at night, hoping to be a "catcher in the rye," to prevent children from falling from innocence into the "phoniness" of adults. The image and title come from a Robert Burns poem. At the end of that novel, we learn that Holden is speaking from a mental institution.

Answer: William Shakespeare

Among Shakespeare's plays, few get more "obscure" than "Henry IV, Part 2", which follows "Richard II" and "Henry IV, Part 1" in a series which also includes the better-known "Henry V." The title character of that play, known as Hal in this play, is set against his old friend Falstaff, a comical figure who actually appears in many of the Bard's works. Falstaff spends the play among low-lifes, getting fairly drunk and eventually rejoining the army. On the other hand, Hal is forced to confront his duty and move away from bad influences as his father sickens.

Although an invasion is beaten back with the help of Prince John, Henry IV dies and is soon replaced by son Hal. At the play's climactic ending, Henry V rejects Falstaff as a lower-class lowlife as he ascends the throne.

The actions are followed in "Henry V," which also sees the death of Falstaff.

Answer: Tristram Shandy

"The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman" was published in nine volumes, beginning in 1759 and ending in 1767. Sterne admitted a huge debt to Rabelais at the book's publication, claiming the Frenchman was his favorite author and that "Gargantua and Pantagruel" heavily inspired his own work. The evidence is fairly clear: both novels are long, rambling, and farcical, and they both include detailed descriptions of noses. Tristram's father Walter develops an obsession with noses, certain that the length of one's nose correlates directly with success in the world. When Dr. Slop, a quack, crushes Tristram's nose with the forceps, it doesn't omen well for the new child. Tristram's other problems during childhood make him feel "cursed" as well. Urinating through a window, he is struck by a sash and accidentally circumcised.

Tristram's further adventures are multitudinous and extensive. Sterne was criticized for using outright plagiarism of other authors (including Rabelais) in "Tristram Shandy"; the book is also often compared to "Don Quixote" in form and content. The satire and gross humor of the novel would influence other authors, including Karl Marx, who wrote an unpublished response to the novel titled "Scorpion and Felix" in 1837.

Answer: Salman Rushdie

Salman Rushdie won the Booker Prize in 1981 for his masterpiece of magical realism, "Midnight's Children". However, it is another novel, "The Satanic Verses", which earned Mr. Rushdie most international fame, when the Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa death sentence upon the author. The novel about two Indian immigrants to the UK contains several passages caricaturing history told in the Koran, and a mistranslation of an Arabic word implied that Rushdie was in fact calling the entire Koran "satanic."

"Midnight's Children" gained its fair share of controversy too, mainly from Indira Gandhi, who was not portrayed positively in the India-set novel. The novel traces Saleem's life by describing his "ancestors." However, in one of the most unexpected turn of events in literature, Saleem was actually swapped at birth with his soon-to-be rival Shiva-of-the-knees, and was in fact the son of an accordionist who is hardly described at all. Regardless, Saleem, Shiva, a girl named Parvati the Witch, and thousands of other Indian children are suddenly endowed with fantastical powers when they are born near midnight the day of India's independence. The closer to midnight, the stronger the powers. Saleem, born right at 12:00 AM, has the telepathic ability to link all of the Midnight Children together. After some complicated yet fascinating adventures, the children are rounded up and sterilized by Gandhi.

Answer: Crime and Punishment

Raskolnikov, the brooding protagonist of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's philosophical novel "Crime and Punishment," wonders if he really is an "uebermensch", or superhuman. Can he commit crimes with impunity, because he's a special human being? To test the theory, the impoverished law student murders a pawn broker and her sister, then slowly succumbs to feelings of guilt which torment his thoughts and break down his motivation. Throughout the novel, Raskolnikov is contrasted with his affable friends Zossimov and Razumikhin, as well as his kind, caring sister Dunya, but Svidrigailov is perhaps the most intriguing character. An epicurean with the "all-for-me" attitude, Svidrigailov eavesdrops on Raskolnikov's revelations and nearly rapes his sister Dunya, before committing suicide suddenly and without a stated reason. Eventually, Raskolnikov breaks down, finding solace with the Christian salvation offered by a prostitute named Sonia, and confesses his crime to the judge Porfiry. For this, he is sent to Siberia.

Answer: Cyrano de Bergerac

Despite his military skill, talent with words, and otherwise extreme eligibility, poor Cyrano, a French Army cadet, is unable to woo his beloved Roxane. At the beginning of the play, Cyrano saves Roxane from a brawl at a theater, but his angered to find out that she has fallen in love with a fellow military man, Christian de Neuvillette. Cyrano gets even angrier when Christian insults the size of his nose, while he lacks the ability to write an eloquent letter declaring his love for Roxane. Instead, Cyrano, out of a desperate love for Roxane, agrees to write Christian's letters and supply dialogue for the cadet during a romantic balcony scene. Christian and Roxane end up marrying.

War breaks out. Roxane makes it to the front lines and reveals to Cyrano that she would love Christian even if he were ugly. Then, Christian dies in battle, and Cyrano holds off the offensive while refusing to tell Roxane the truth. Fifteen years later, with Cyrano at the edge of death, he finally reveals to his love that he had been the author of the letters from so long ago, and the lovers unite at his deathbed.

Cyrano de Bergerac was in fact a real playwright, though Rostand took extreme liberty with details of the man's life. He did have a large nose, too, though probably not as gigantic as is depicted in most productions of "Cyrano de Bergerac."

Answer: Pinocchio

The children's book "The Adventures of Pinocchio" was written by Carlo Collodi and first published in book form in 1883. Collodi, a satirist who frequently used allegory in his works, is almost exclusively famous for his story about Pinocchio, a wooden puppet whose nose grows whenever he acts rudely (a frequent occurrence).

A poor puppeteer named Gepetto carves Pinocchio out of a talking block of wood from his neighbor Master Antonio; however, as soon as the puppet learns how to walk, he runs away.

He makes friends with a Talking Cricket (unnamed in the Collodi version of the story), and gets into a lot of trouble with a Fox and a Cat, who ultimately leave him to strangle hanging from a tree in the forest. After several more adventures, which include time spent in a prison in the city of Catchfools, being trapped in a trap for weasels, being transformed into a donkey, and meeting Gepetto in the body of a whale, he eventually is transformed into a real boy by a fairy's kiss and lives happily ever after.