Odd Bits in Great Literature Trivia Quiz

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.")