Mystery Men of Literature Trivia Quiz

Answer: Homer

Though "The Odyssey" and "The Iliad" are two of the cornerstones of Western literature, nothing concrete is known about their authorship. They have been attributed to 'Homer' since ancient times, but modern scholarship questions the veracity of this attribution. Did this 'Homer' really exist? Were these great works written by the same author or two different authors? Were they tales passed orally through generations? Were each of them written by several authors? It's likely that the facts of the matter will never be known.

It's equally likely that they will remain two of the most revered masterpieces of Western literature.

Answer: J.D. Salinger

Jerome David Salinger (b.1919) is most famous for his classic novel of adolescence, "Catcher in the Rye". It remains one of the most widely read high school texts in the U.S. J.D. Salinger should never be confused with J.J. "Dy-no-mite!" Evans, the character from the 70's sit-com, "Good Times".

Answer: Arthur Rimbaud

Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891) is one of the most famous and enigmatic French symbolist poets. He began writing as a child and had completed his last masterwork, "Illuminations" at the age of twenty. After a tempestuous relationship with the poet, Paul Verlaine (featured in the film, "Total Eclipse" with Leonardo DiCaprio as Rimbaud), and having given up creative writing completely, he embarked on several years of wandering (Europe, Java, Cyprus) before settling in Ethiopia where he became a merchant (of arms, among other things).

Answer: Thomas Pynchon

Thomas Pynchon (b.1937) has published six novels to date (2008): "V" (1963); "The Crying of Lot 49" (1966); "Gravity's Rainbow" (1973); "Vineland" (1990); "Mason & Dixon" (1997); and, in 2006, the long-awaited, "Against the Day". While six novels over a period of more than forty years may not seem like a substantial body of work, the influence, scope and complexity of these far-ranging works number them amongst the most significant American fiction of the late twentieth century (and counting). Despite his avoidance of the media (scarcely a single verified photograph of him exists beyond his twenties), he made two cameo 'appearances' on "The Simpsons" in 2004.

Answer: 'The Manuscript Found in Saragossa' by Jan Potocki

Count Jan Nepomucen Potocki (1761-1815) is famous in Poland for being the first Pole to fly in a balloon (in 1790). He travelled widely during his extremely active life, taking in much of Europe, Russia, Turkey, Northern Africa and Mongolia. As an early ethnologist, he specialized in the history of Slavic peoples. "The Manuscript Found in Saragossa", his only novel, had an appropriately bewildering history. Only published in part during his lifetime (some of it in French, some in Polish), the complete novel only appeared in print (in French, later in English) in 1989.

There is some controversy as to whether Potocki is actually the author. The novel is an intricate weaving of stories-within-stories; part Gothic novel, picaresque, incredibly dense. Potocki's manner of suicide is as legendary as his life was action-packed and his novel is complex.

Answer: Ambrose Bierce

Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?), a Civil War veteran, set out from Washington D.C. in 1913 to re-visit the battlefields of the South. He ended up in Mexico, at the time in the middle of its own revolutionary war, and travelled with the army of Pancho Villa.

He is known to have reached the city of Chihuahua. He sent a few last letters home, some intimating approaching danger, even his own possible death, and was then never seen or heard from again. Speculation regarding his fate has been rife ever since.

There remains not a scrap of conclusive evidence supporting any hypothesis of what became of him. Regardless of what happened in 1913-14, he's certainly dead now.

Answer: Pier Paolo Pasolini

Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975) is considered one of the most significant Italian film-makers. As a homosexual, communist, anti-consumerist, and outspoken anti-Fascist, he courted controversy for most of his career. On November 2nd, 1975 he was run over several times by his own car in a beachside suburb of Rome.

A 17-year-old boy was arrested for the murder but was later acquitted. Conjecture has been rampant, with suggestions of a goverment or big business killing (his last, unfinished novel, "Petrolio" was to explore the machinations of the oil industry), murder at the hands of a disgruntled pimp, or because of his homosexuality or political views.

It has even been suggested that he planned his own death as a kind of ultimate 'work of art'.

Answer: Jean Genet

Jean Genet (1910-1986) was the son of a prostitute. He was adopted and then, after the death of his foster mother, was placed in the care of an elderly couple. He was constantly in trouble as a child. He was first imprisoned at the age of 15 and spent three years in jail.

He joined the Foreign Legion but was discharged for homosexuality. He then spent several years as a vagrant wandering around Europe, surviving through petty theft and prostitution. He began writing during his various stints in prison.

His poems, novels and plays often explore his sexuality and other aspects of his life. His colorful, evocative, heady prose idealises his fellow prisoners and presents them as beautiful figures. His life became the focus of Sartre's existential musings. Thanks to Sartre, and other members of the literary community, Genet was spared a life sentence for perpetual crime. Upon his death, the manuscript of "Prisoner of Love" was found complete on his desk.

It was the first work he had written in over twenty years and in Genet's own peculiar way explores the situation in Palestine.

Answer: B. Traven

The writer known as B. Traven has become the most mysterious figure in the recent literary world. The complexity of his lack-of-biography is too vast to enter into here, but, in summary: he published in German (though his writing seemed full of Americanisms and less-than-perfect German) and supposedly translated himself into English (though his English seemed fairly weak); he may have been born Otto Feige, in Poland; he may have become Ret Marut, an anarchist editor in Munich who escaped his execution; he may have been Traven Torsvan, an Acapulco inn-keeper; he may have been Hal Croves, a man who claimed to be B. Traven's agent who appeared at the filming of John Huston's "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" and behaved so strangely that Huston immediately suspected he was Traven himself; he may have been Jack London! Or, he may have been someone else.

The man who claimed he was Traven married Rosa Elena Lujan and died in Mexico. His widow was convinced he was Traven, though she couldn't prove it.

It's generally accepted that he was indeed B. Traven, but who WAS he? It's been speculated that some childhood trauma, or flight from a shameful past, caused Traven himself to forget his own identity!

Answer: M. Ageyev

"Novel With Cocaine" is a minor classic that deals with a student's burgeoning sexuality and gradual decline into cocaine abuse. Although it was once speculatively attributed to Vladimir Nabokov, the most likely candidate for the identity of M. Ageyev is an otherwise utterly obscure Russian author, Mark Levi. Nothing is known of his life other than that he sent 'a manuscript' from Istanbul to Paris, that he re-entered Russia soon afterwards and that he died in 1973.