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Odd Bits in Great Literature Trivia Quiz

Great artists are sometimes crazy. And no, not just the painters who cut off their ears. Consider these famous writers and the odd bits they want us to suspend our disbelief for. Second in a small series of "odd bit" quizzes.

A multiple-choice quiz by NormanW5. Estimated time: 8 mins.

Author
NormanW5

Time
8 mins

Type
Multiple Choice

Quiz #
320,629

Updated
Dec 03 21

# Qns
10

Difficulty
Tough

Avg Score
5 / 10

Plays
816

One at a Time - Single Page - Timed Game

Question 1 of 10

1. Much of Western storytelling started with the Bible, and so we should expect to find some odd bits in the Good Book too. Three of these bits are from the Bible. Which one does not belong? Hint

A beautiful young man falls in love with his own reflection in a pool.

A man dies when he falls asleep during a long sermon and falls out of a window.

A prophet is angry with God for letting a worm kill a plant.

A man of God brings a young man back to life by lying stretched out on his corpse.

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Question 2 of 10

2. Before the development of modern fiction, a favorite device was the 'frame story,' a story within which other stories are told. Some of these frames are odder than the stories inside them. Which of the following descriptions of an important frame is NOT correct? Hint

Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" has crusaders returning home to Canterbury earning their nights' lodging by telling tales.

The "Arabian Nights" has a new wife tell her sultan husband stories to keep him too entertained to execute her.

Gower's "Confessio Amantis" has a young man in a confessional booth telling his sins against love to Venus.

Boccaccio's "Decameron" has people fleeing the Black Death tell stories while waiting for the plague to end.

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Question 3 of 10

3. In a tight spot with your spouse or your boss? The more outrageous your story, the better. Why, when in "Bleak House" the 19th century novelist Charles Dickens had written his central characters into an extremely tight spot, he needed an extremely odd event to save them from the evil clutches of the villainous Krook. What event does Dickens have happen to Krook? Hint

Krook suddenly found the Lord through the Salvation Army, and repented.

Krook spontaneously combusted.

Krook was kidnapped by a lost Turkish military unit and taken to Istanbul.

Krook was struck by a falling chamberpot, developed complete amnesia, and became generous.

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Question 4 of 10

4. A good family man takes in a stranger who, unknown to anyone, is a ventriloquist. As a prank, he throws his voice so that his host believes that the voice is God's--and a little later "God" commands the host to kill his wife and children. To the ventriloquist's surprise, he obeys! This is the odd central action in which rather gothic novel? Hint

"Stranger in a Strange Land" by Robert Heinlein.

"Wieland" by Charles Brockden Brown.

"The Fall of the House of Usher" by Edgar Allen Poe.

"Quicksand" by Nella Larsen.

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Question 5 of 10

5. Use an impossible event or an outrageous coincidence to end your novel? Everyone will hate it. But if you start your fiction with the same outrageous event, you might write great literature. Which of the following openings worked for a famous writer? Hint

A twenty-something meets the love of his life when he's forced to retake 5th grade and she's his teacher.

A man wakes up to find he turned into a cockroach while he slept and can't easily even turn over.

A Confederate soldier is spared when a Union firing squad somehow all miss.

A six-year-old girl wakes up from a flying dream, falls three feet back onto her bed, and tries to do it again.

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Question 6 of 10

6. Eugene Ionesco, one of the "Theater of the Absurd" playwrights, wrote a play in which the main character watches as his friends and neighbors turn into wild creatures. Which of the following correctly describes that absurd--or odd--play? Hint

In "Lovebirds," characters abandon harsh reality, sink into the sentimental, and symbolically become doves and parakeets.

In "The Treaty of Versailles," strutting turkeys and annoying cuckoos solve international problems with "cockamamie" proposals.

In "Pan Returns," lustful artists in interwar Paris turn into goats, cats, bulls, wolves, nymphs, and satyrs.

In "Rhinoceros," an entire community conforms by becoming rhinoceroses while the main character remains isolated and human.

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Question 7 of 10

7. Sometimes very odd things end up making good sense when looked at properly. In Conan Doyle's novel "The Sign of the Four," Sherlock Holmes explains to a worried Watson that the knock on the door is not the police: "No, it's not quite so bad as that. It is the unofficial force-the Baker Street irregulars." Who are these odd, unusual, but helpful 'colleagues' of Sherlock Holmes? Hint

Off duty detectives, who can do with Holmes what they cannot do on the force.

Street urchins, who can poke about for Holmes without adults noticing.

Recently demobbed soldiers eager to do some good and avoid boredom.

Capable women, unable to work in the Victorian man's world, eager to exercise their skills.

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Question 8 of 10

8. Some oddities are subtle, and we don't notice them until someone else points them out. In my case, it took a hilarious essay by Mark Twain to make me notice some of the really odd bits in James Fenimore Cooper's "The Deerslayer." Believe it or not, Cooper is guilty of three of the following "literary offenses." Which is the one that Twain doesn't point out? Hint

Indians [sic] jump out of a tree and somehow miss a 140 foot long scow traveling 1 mile per hour.

A gale is driving a ship toward the shore; its captain steers to an undertow to hold it back.

The Deerslayer uses his tracking skills to follow the path of a cannonball back to the fort.

While hunting deer, Natty Bumpo steps on dry twigs without making any noise.

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Question 9 of 10

9. Clive Staples Lewis' day job was as a professor, but he was also a popular fiction author. He wrote seven Narnia fantasy novels, "The Screwtape Letters," "A Pilgrim's Regress," "The Great Divorce," "Till We Have Faces," and a trio of science fiction novels. And they are all filled with imaginative and delightfully odd bits, including three of the following four. Which is the one I made up? Hint

In the second novel of the space trilogy, the hero travels from earth to Venus in a coffin.

In the sixth Narnia novel, a thrown away piece of metal grows like a tree into a streetlamp.

In "Till We Have Faces," the narrator's sister's husband tells the sister she must never look at his face.

In "The Great Divorce," the occupants of an excursion bus discover they are all dead when the world is shadowy and insubstantial.

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Question 10 of 10

10. We end with a possible abuse of the "odd bits" category. "Tristram Shandy" is an 18th century novel by Lawrence Sterne that's quite important in the history of the novel. At the same time, everything in it is odd. So "bit" is stretched, but "odd" more than makes up for it. Which odd plot detail is NOT found in Sterne's novel? Hint

Traveling through Lyon, Tristram befriends an ass, names it "Honesty," and feeds it a macaroon.

Tristram is accidentally circumcised by a window sash.

Uncle Toby marries Parson Yorick's cow--and the parson officiates.

Book 9, chapters 18 and 19 are blank pages.

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Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts

1. Much of Western storytelling started with the Bible, and so we should expect to find some odd bits in the Good Book too. Three of these bits are from the Bible. Which one does not belong?

Answer: A beautiful young man falls in love with his own reflection in a pool.

The beautiful young man was Narcissus from Greek mythology, and it is from this story that we get the psychological word "narcissistic." The others are all in the Bible. You can find the odd resurrection in 2 Kings 4; you can learn about the angry prophet in Jonah 4; you can read about the dead sleeper in Acts 20: 7-12. And maybe that last one isn't so odd...

Answer: Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" has crusaders returning home to Canterbury earning their nights' lodging by telling tales.

The "Canterbury Tales" were actually presented as a story-telling competition for local pilgrims to Canterbury Cathedral to entertain each other on the long, dusty journey.

Answer: Krook spontaneously combusted.

Since first reading "Bleak House" I have been on the lookout for other cases of spontaneous combustion. Since 1968, I have actually read 7 or 8 newspaper stories reporting cases of spontaneous combustion in the here and now. I still don't believe it, and think Dickens--who claimed to believe it happened--actually just gave up and chose this out in sheer desperation, hoping his readers would be gullible. Maybe the contemporary "reporters" were writing out of sheer desperation as well.

Answer: "Wieland" by Charles Brockden Brown.

Charles Brockden Brown was the most important literary figure in North America before the 19th century, and "Wieland" is his best-known work. "The Fall of the House of Usher"--a short story, not a novel--is Poe's famous horror story about a sister's burial. "Quicksand" is Larsen's loosely autobiographical novel about a bi-racial woman in the early 20th century. "Stranger in a Strange Land" is Heinlein's retelling of the story of Jesus Christ as a modern science fiction novel.

Heinlein's novel gave 1960's English slang the word "grok," meaning (roughly) acceptance based on deep understanding.

Answer: A man wakes up to find he turned into a cockroach while he slept and can't easily even turn over.

Franz Kafka wrote about what it's like being a cockroach in his story "The Metamorphosis." Please contact me as soon as possible if you find a work beginning with one of the other outrageous openings.

Answer: In "Rhinoceros," an entire community conforms by becoming rhinoceroses while the main character remains isolated and human.

Ionesco wrote his first play "The Bald Soprano" when he was 40 trying to learn English. Ionesco was struck by how the supplied practice conversations discussed such "astonishing" truths as that the speakers shopped at the grocery, had children, and lived in London flats. A second language context was turning these previously banal items into apparently philosophical Truths.

Ionesco starting looking at his own language differently, and put the insights learned from second language practice conversations into the odd conversations of his first play.

Answer: Street urchins, who can poke about for Holmes without adults noticing.

Conan Doyle describes the lads positively: "As he spoke, there came a swift pattering of naked feet upon the stairs, a clatter of high voices, and in rushed a dozen dirty and ragged little street Arabs. There was some show of discipline among them, despite their tumultuous entry, for they instantly drew up in line and stood facing us with expectant faces." The Irregulars reappear in other stories and Holmes always praises their work.

A more famous "odd bit" is found in the story "Silver Blaze." It goes:
- Scotland Yard detective: "Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?"
- Sherlock Holmes: "To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time."
- Detective: "The dog did nothing in the night-time."
- Holmes: "That was the curious incident."
But that one would have been too easy.

Answer: While hunting deer, Natty Bumpo steps on dry twigs without making any noise.

The Mark Twain essay that was the source of this question is one of Twain's funniest. I highly recommend "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses." It's now old enough to be in the public domain, so you can find it on the internet.

Answer: In "The Great Divorce," the occupants of an excursion bus discover they are all dead when the world is shadowy and insubstantial.

Actually, Lewis describes the world outside the excursion bus as more real than the ghosts, not the other way around. The grass just outside of heaven hurts their feet, for example. Lewis' point is that we are welcome in heaven if we can stand it, but we need to be the kind of people comfortable with complete reality. Some commentators consider that odd.

The growing piece of metal is from "The Magician's Nephew." The lamppost where Lucy meets Mr. Tumnus in "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe"is the same one. The coffin spaceship is for Ransom in the novel "Perelandra".

Answer: Uncle Toby marries Parson Yorick's cow--and the parson officiates.

Yet another odd plot bit arises when Uncle Toby's colonel builds a machine using a hookah that fires many small cannons at once. However, soon the colonel and Toby find puffing on the hookah pipe so much "fun" that they keep firing the cannons over and over.

"Tristram Shandy" is one of England's earliest novels, its first two volumes (out of 9) published in 1759. Yet its extremely unusual style--such as being organized associatively rather than temporally--makes some scholars declare it a "post-modern" novel. (One way to define postmodernism is "has lots of odd bits.")

Source: Author NormanW5

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor MotherGoose before going online.
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