Less Than the Best Trivia Quiz

Answer: John Steinbeck

Steinbeck's darker and better known-works include "The Grapes of Wrath" and "Of Mice and Men". In "Cannery Row", Steinbeck still chose the Depression Era as his setting, but his focus was more on the unity and support provided by community, even in the hardest of times. This is actually a favorite of mine, so what do the critics know!

Answer: Nabokov

Undoubtedly, Nabokov's career hinged, for better or worse, on "Lolita". Nevertheless, "Invitation to a Beheading" also explores the high price that one must pay to gain one's independence, albeit only figuratively. In this case, almost the whole book takes place in a jail cell.

The latter work is definitely not better-known than his controversial tour-de-force novel, though I'm not sure that you can consider either to be head and shoulders above the other in terms of merits.

Answer: Gabriel Garcia-Marquez

"One Hundred Years of Solitude" (or "Cien Aņos de Soledad") is undoubtedly GGM's masterpiece. His singular style is evident in all of his writing, including the semi-journalistic style used for "Chronicle of a Death Foretold" or the more straightforward historical style used for "The General in His Labyrinth".

The other authors are all Latin American greats who have written other famous works different from those highlighted here.

Answer: True

Margaret Mitchell's "Gone with the Wind" is the quintessential story of the old South in the US before, during and after the Civil War. Mitchell actually had written another story before GWTW, but she must not have thought much of it because she kept it hidden away in her attic in a trunk and never published it.

Emily Bronte wrote "Wuthering Heights", for which she will always be remembered. Illness took her from this life too early, otherwise she may have produced more memorable literature.

Boris Pasternak, the author of "Doctor Zhivago" went through persecution and criticism in the Soviet Union after publishing his epic novel and winning the Nobel Prize for it in 1958, which may have contributed to the accelerated growth of the lung cancer that which took his life just two years later in 1960 before being able to write and publish anything else.

None of these authors can be accused of producing any published work in their life times that was "Less than the Best".

Answer: J.D. Salinger

J.D. Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye" certainly does eclipse the other works listed in the question, though I've read most of them, and have liked them a lot.

The other authors given as possible answers are well-known for a larger body of work, though each has one or two major works that stand out from the rest of their writing (Kurt Vonnegut is best known for "Slaughterhouse Five" and "Cat's Cradle"; Philip Roth is well-known for "Goodbye Columbus" and "Portnoy's Complaint", among many other works of fiction; Mordecai Richler is best known for "The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz", but he has any other well-known works, like "Solomon Gursky Was Here"). None of these other writers, however, has a single work that is the only thing people think of when their name comes up, like Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye".

Answer: Lord of the Flies

Most American youths have to read "Lord of the Flies" in Language Arts at school, which is unfortunate, because it is a good story, and I think more people would like it if they read it on their own initiative and not because they are being forced to do so.

Answer: The Greatest Story Ever Told

"The Greatest Story Ever Told" is better known as a movie extravaganza on the life of Jesus Christ. It was first an obsucre novel written by Fulton Oursler in the late 1940s. Oursler was a senior editor at Readers' Digest. The novel was picked up for radio and became a serial program, and then the rights to film the novel wore bought by 20th Century Fox.

It is certainly not a story by Herman Melville, who is probably turning over in his grave right now at the thought that this might be attributed to him.

The other three works listed are lesser-known stories by Melville.

Answer: A Pelican in the Wilderness

John Grisham did write a legal crime novel with "Pelican" in the title, called "The Pelican Brief". "A Pelican in the Wilderness" is a novel by Isabel Colegate on the struggle to release oneself from the ties that bind one to society and embrace the life of a hermit. The other titles listed are all non-legal stories and novels by John Grisham.

Answer: The Last of the Good Guys

"The Last of the Good Guys" is a mafia-inspired novel by John Carbone. All of the others listed are by Puzo, who has written more novels on the mafia than any other well-known modern novelist.

Answer: Konrad Kujau's "The Hitler Diaries"

Kujau's fraudulent work was purported to be a series of diaries written by Adolph Hitler. They turned out to be invented by Kujau himself, and they were published despite their dubious nature in Kujau's lifetime. The other works listed were published after their authors' deaths, in the case of Hemingway and Nabokov, somewhat controversially.

Hemingway's memoir was heavily edited and parts were added by the editor himself. In the case of Nabokov, the "book" was a series of index cards that the author had jotted ideas down on. Nabokov was very ill and asked his wife and child to destroy the cards as he was not proud of the work. Nabokov's son could not bring himself to do so, and they were published many years later. Only the Fitzgerald novel is a high-quality work, and it is a shame it was not published during his lifetime.