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'Wonder Boys' Basics Trivia Quiz

This quiz is on some of the basic plot points in Michael Chabon's novel 'Wonder Boys'. I tried to stick to things that you'd have to have read the book (rather than seen the movie) to know. Enjoy!

A multiple-choice quiz by rj211. Estimated time: 5 mins.

Author
rj211

Time
5 mins

Type
Multiple Choice

Quiz #
111,178

Updated
Dec 03 21

# Qns
10

Difficulty
Tough

Avg Score
6 / 10

Plays
180

One at a Time - Single Page - Timed Game

Question 1 of 10

1. Grady Tripp and his editor Terry Crabtree had met in college when they were in a creative writing class together. On the day of a deadline, Grady desperately rewrote from memory an August Van Zorn short story. As luck would have it, Terry's story was read first, and he had turned in an exact copy of the original. While the rest of the class failed to notice the similarities, the two 'authors' recognized what happened and started a friendship. The question, though, is did Grady Tripp know August Van Zorn, the author the two had plagiarized from, personally?

Yes

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Question 2 of 10

2. Emily marked how many marriages for Grady? Hint

three

one

none

two

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Question 3 of 10

3. Who are the 'Wonder Boys'? Hint

Hannah Green's twin mice rescued from the psych lab

The main characters in Grady's perpetually unfinished novel

The guest lecturers at Wordfest

The students in Grady's honors writing class

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Question 4 of 10

4. While dropping Antonia, Terry's transvestite friend, off at his house, Grady gave the man the small gun he had earlier taken from James Leer. In exchange, what did Antonia/Tony give Grady? Hint

a baggie of pot

a tuba

a watch

his phone number

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Question 5 of 10

5. What was the title of James' novel? Hint

The Love Parade

The Arsonist's Girl

The Bottomlands

The Land Downstairs

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Question 6 of 10

6. What was the religion practiced by the Warshaws, Grady's wife's family? Hint

Catholicism

Atheism

Judaism

Buddhism

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Question 7 of 10

7. What did James carve into his hand? Hint

Before. i die

Carmel

Marilyn

Frank Capra

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Question 8 of 10

8. What kind of animal did Philly Warshaw, Grady's brother in law, have? Hint

horse

parrot

snake

turtle

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Question 9 of 10

9. True or false: Irene, Grady's mother in law, called James' parents after the Passover dinner, thus blowing the lid on his intricate lies regarding his past.

True

False

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Question 10 of 10

10. Who has possession of Marilyn's wedding jacket at the end of the novel? Hint

Hannah Green

Irene Warshaw

Amanda Leer

Sara Gaskell

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Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts

Answer: yes

August Van Zorn, real name Albert Vetch, had lived upstairs in the hotel Grady grew up in. It was this man's tormented working habits that led Grady to coin his term, 'the midnight disease.'

2. Emily marked how many marriages for Grady?

Answer: three

Emily was Grady's third wife. He figured he drove all of them away to some extent, by cheating, or smoking pot, or just generally acting like an adolescent.

3. Who are the 'Wonder Boys'?

Answer: The main characters in Grady's perpetually unfinished novel

Grady's fourth attempt at a novel, into the thousands of pages and nowhere near finished, was about a family of men, the Wonders, and all the melodramatic things that happened to them. Periodically in Chabon's writing, though, he refers to young writers as 'wonder boys' (like James Leer and some of the kids at the school where Grady worked in the end).

4. While dropping Antonia, Terry's transvestite friend, off at his house, Grady gave the man the small gun he had earlier taken from James Leer. In exchange, what did Antonia/Tony give Grady?

Answer: a tuba

Grady and Terry had picked it up at the airport thinking it was Antonia's, but they never really found out if it was. She told Grady to keep it when she went home, anyway, so she probably wasn't too attached to it if it was hers! Later, when retrieving Marilyn's jacket from Pea Walker's car, Grady used the tuba in self-defense, slamming it into Booger's stomach.

5. What was the title of James' novel?

Answer: The Love Parade

The other three are Grady's prior novels. James said 'The Love Parade' took him four months to write, a monumentally short period for the creation of a novel!

6. What was the religion practiced by the Warshaws, Grady's wife's family?

Answer: Judaism

The family was Jewish, though all of the kids were adopted Koreans. Grady and James both participated in the Passover festivities when they visited.

7. What did James carve into his hand?

Answer: Frank Capra

Irv Warshaw noticed it as he was bandaging Grady's ankle. James admitted that he had done it with a needle on the day Capra died the prior fall.

8. What kind of animal did Philly Warshaw, Grady's brother in law, have?

Answer: snake

He had a huge boa constrictor, which he kept in a cage in the basement. Apparently, though, the snake often escaped and ate Irene's chickens, leaving piles of dung around the house. Sadly (or maybe not), as Grady was driving off, he ran over the snake, killing it, and added the dead animal to the collection in his trunk.

9. True or false: Irene, Grady's mother in law, called James' parents after the Passover dinner, thus blowing the lid on his intricate lies regarding his past.

Answer: True

She got his number (in Pittsburgh, rather than Carvel) and spoke to the housekeeper, finding his parents were at a country club.

10. Who has possession of Marilyn's wedding jacket at the end of the novel?

Answer: Sara Gaskell

James stole the jacket from Walter Gaskell's special closet the night of the pre-Wordfest party and had it in his bag until he got drunk at Passover and gave it to Irene Warshaw. Before Grady left the Warshaws' house, though, he rescued the coat. It was returned to Walter when the police caught up to James, but when Walter and Sara divorced, she took the coat in exchange for not making him forfeit anything else in his collection of baseball memorabilia.

Then Sara wore the coat when she married Grady and kept it as a memory of the weekend that had sealed their fate together.

Source: Author rj211

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