Who Created Me? #2 Trivia Quiz

Answer: John Steinbeck

Hollywood seems to have an affinity for the novels of John Steinbeck - just a quick check finds movies made from - "The Pearl" (1948), "Of Mice and Men" (at least twice, 1981 and 1992, with the '92 Gary Sinise/John Malkovich version being top-notch), "East of Eden" (1955 with James Dean, and a 1982 mini-series), "Cannery Row" (1982 - a bit oddly done, but with some great bits) "Tortilla Flat" (1942, with Spencer Tracy and Hedy Lamarr), and John Ford's 1940 masterpiece, "The Grapes of Wrath".

Answer: Judy Blume

When Judy Blume started writing in the early seventies, children's books did not often address such topics as divorce, death, racism and sexuality. Blume consistently pushes the boundary of which subjects should be "taboo" in books aimed at children and teens, and she has paid a price for it.

Her books are often censored by parent groups, and banned by school libraries. The response of the children themselves, however, is more positive. Judy Blume's books are still very popular, although some are more than thirty years old.

She has written a book, "Letters to Judy (what your kids wish they could tell you)" (1986), about some of the letters she has received over the years. Again and again, the children write of how they felt that they were alone with their problems, and what a relief it was to find a book about someone going through the same difficulty.

Answer: Somerset Maugham

William Somerset Maugham (1874 - 1965) travelled widely throughout his lifetime, and much of his fiction, especially the short stories, is set in the hot and steamy corners of the British Empire. His short stories are in my opinion very good, very atmospheric, often with a twist in the plot.

His own opinion of his talents was that he stood "in the very first row of the second-raters" (from his autobiography "The Summing Up" 1938).

Answer: Elizabeth Peters

This woman is a very prolific writer. As Elizabeth Peters she writes the Amelia Peabody series, set in Victorian Egypt; the Jacqueline Kirby series, following the adventures of her librarian-turned-romance writer heroine; and the Vicky Bliss series, in which the main character is an art historian.

She also has written a good handful of non-series novels. As Barbara Michaels, she has written a long list of what could best be described as modern Gothic romances, with lots of haunted houses and people being possessed by ghosts from the past. And, in her own character, Dr. Mertz is a published Egyptologist.

Answer: Raymond Chandler

Raymond Chandler novels have been made into some of the best film noir classics out of Hollywood - "The Big Sleep" with Humphrey Bogart (1946), "Farewell my Lovely" with Robert Mitchum (1944), and even 1973's "The Long Goodbye", with Elliot Gould. Chandler also wrote or co-wrote the screenplays for other noir classics "Double Indemnity" (1944) "The Blue Dahlia" (1946) and "Strangers on a Train" (1951).

Answer: Annie Proulx

Annie Proulx' best known novel is "The Shipping News" (1993) which won the National Book Award and the Irish Times Fiction Prize, but in my opinion, 2002's "That Old Ace in the Hole", set in the Texas Panhandle, is just as good a book. Her trademarks are quirky characters, a strong sense of place, and a characteristic stark compassion which underlies all her work.

Answer: Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard Kipling was born in India in 1865. At the age of five, he and his younger sister were sent to England to be boarded with an English family, a practice that was common at the time for the children of English people working in India. He was unlucky in his English home, however, and was subjected to what, these days, we would regard as pretty severe emotional and physical abuse.

At the age of sixteen he returned to India, and began working as a newspaperman. During this time he wrote a large number of short stories and poems about the life of the English in India, which caused quite a sensation in England, especially when the reading public became aware of his age.

In 1889 he returned to England, and only paid one more short visit to India in his lifetime.

India had a hold on his imagination, however, which gave the world some remarkable short stories, and three wonderful novels, "The Jungle Book", "The Second Jungle Book", and "Kim".

Answer: James Jones

James Jones (1921 - 1977) is considered one of the most important writers exploring the American experience of the Second World War. His most famous work is "From Here to Eternity" (1951), which was filmed in 1953.

Answer: Sue Grafton

Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone has been steadily working her way through the alphabet since 1982's "A is for Alibi". And after she gets to Z? No problem - "AA is for Battery", "BB is for Gun"....

Answer: Margaret Drabble

Margaret Drabble is a highly respected English novelist, and the editor of the 1985 edition of "The Oxford Companion to English Literature". She is also the sister of novelist A.S. Byatt.

Answer: Arthur Conan Doyle

The most famous character created by Conan Doyle was, of course, Sherlock Holmes. Holmes first appeared in 1887, in the novel "A Study in Scarlet", and returned two years later in "The Sign of Four". Doyle attempted to establish a medical practice, but was not very successful.

In 1891 he began his long association with "The Strand" magazine, publishing the Sherlock Holmes short stories. Doyle soon tired of Holmes, and tried to kill off the character in 1893, but, after a public outcry, brought him back to life, and continued with two more volumes of stories of deduction and detection.

Answer: Robert A. Heinlein

In researching Heinlein for this quiz, I came across one anecdote that, to me, captures the essence of the man (from "Robert A Heinlein, a Biographical Sketch", by Bill Patterson) "In his senior year of high school, he industriously collected letters of recommendation (to the Naval College at Annapolis) and sent them to his Senator.

He attended one year of college at Kansas City Junior College while waiting for the results of his efforts. In the meantime, Sen. Reed had received one hundred letters requesting appointments to Annapolis - one each for fifty individuals and fifty for Robert A.

Heinlein. Heinlein obtained the appointment to Annapolis." (Thanks to - site: Robert A Heinlein at nitrosyncretic.com).

Answer: Graham Greene

Greene's novels tend to portray seedy, morally ambivalent characters and to take place in odd, and often violent, corners of the world, which some critics have referred to as "Greeneland". Greene's own reaction to these critics - "...I have sometimes wondered whether they go round the world blinkered. 'This is Indochina,' I want to exclaim, 'this is Mexico, this is Sierra Leone carefully and accurately described.'" (From "Ways of Escape" 1980)

Answer: Louisa May Alcott

Author of one of the best-loved American novels, "Little Women", Alcott grew up in a decidedly unconventional household. Her father, Bronson Alcott, was a member of the New England Transcendentalists, and a friend of Thoreau and Emerson. She spent part of her childhood in the utopian community of Fruitlands, which ultimately failed due to impracticality.

Answer: Laurence Block

Laurence Block is one of my favorite mystery authors. His books are always well-plotted and well-written, the comic novels are reliably witty and fast-paced, and the Matthew Scudder series are just good books, period. Alcoholics Anonymous is as much a character in the later novels as Scudder is himself.

Answer: Franklin W. Dixon

Franklin W. Dixon, the creator of the "Hardy Boys" kids mystery series, was himself the creation of Edward L Stratemeyer. Stratemeyer was a publisher with a fertile mind; he created the characters and plot outlines for several series, not only the "Hardy Boys", but also "Nancy Drew" and "The Bobbsey Twins".

He would hire authors to actually write, under pen names, the books which he had outlined. The first eleven "Hardy Boys" books were written by Leslie McFarlane, who also wrote many of the "Dana Girls" books, ostensibly by Carolyn Keane.

Answer: Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1953 for "The Old Man and the Sea", and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954 "for his mastery of the art of literature...and for the influence that he has exerted on contemporary style".

Answer: Douglas Adams

Grab your towel, and DON'T PANIC. Douglas Adams wrote the "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" series, and, if you haven't read them, why are you wasting your time doing quizzes? Get reading!

Answer: Charles Dickens

Even if you have never read the novels that these characters appear in ("Nicholas Nickleby", "Martin Chuzzlewit", "Great Expectations", and "Bleak House") you were probably able to guess that they were created by Dickens. He had a genius for giving his characters grotesque, but curiously apt, names.

Answer: Terry Brooks

Terry Brooks published the first Shannara book, "The Sword of Shannara" in 1977, but it was not until after the third book in the series, "The Wishsong of Shannara", was published in 1985 that he quit his law practice, and plunged into writing full time. Since then he has written many more "Shannara" books, the "Landover series, and the "Word and Void" trilogy.

He also wrote the novelization for "Star Wars Part I - The Phantom Menace".

Answer: John Grisham

John Grisham's first novel, 1989's "A Time To Kill" was a moderate success, but his next, "The Firm", which was published in 1990, started an avalanche of best-sellers which has yet to slow down.

Answer: Robert B. Parker

Parker's most famous series detective is Spenser, the Boston P.I. who inspired the TV series "Spenser - For Hire" (1985 - 1988), but he has recently created two other characters, Jesse Stone and Sunny Randall. Neither of these characters has anything like the wit and appeal of the early Spenser stories, though. (Nor, for that matter, do any of the Spenser books written in the last dozen years or so.)

Answer: Geoffrey Trease

When I was a child, Geoffrey Trease (1909 - 1998) was one of my half-dozen favorite authors, and hands down my favorite author of historical fiction. I know that my moderately good grasp of European history is due in large part to his realistic, exciting, and just all-round excellent books. "Cue for Treason" (1940) is probably the most famous; this story of Elizabethan England, Shakespeare, and spies was "taken" in schools for many years.

Answer: John D. MacDonald

John D. MacDonald is best known for his series about Florida "salvage consultant" Travis McGee, in which all the books have a color in the title ("Pale Grey for Guilt", "One Fearful Yellow Eye, "The Green Ripper", etc). He also wrote an amazing number of paperback originals for Fawcett in the 1950s and 1960s with lurid front covers, and titles like "A Bullet for Cinderella".

Answer: George Orwell

I love George Orwell. I love his integrity, his clear eye and even hand at exposing the hypocrisy of both the right and the left. That said, I'm not much of a fan of his novels - I read "Animal Farm" and "1984" more than thirty years ago, and once was enough. I much prefer "Down and Out in Paris and London" or "The Road to Wigan Pier".