Lit Quiz Prelims Answers

Overbooked2o16
literaturequiz set by
vishal
das
gerleo

April 4, 2016
CRC 103, IIT Madras
as part of Saahitya, IITM’s
litfest

Stats:
30 questions
11-19 starred
Cut off: 14.5
Highest: 23

Please give proper credits if/when
you are using questions
:)
There are no safety slides

1
➔Investing in a shop at Navrangpura Mall
➔Opening the top button of Vidya’s kurti and sliding fingers in
➔A one second delay in getting out of the captor’s grip, grabbing Ali and
pulling him to the side.
What do these activities constitute? We’re looking for 5 words in your quite-a-
specific answer.

2
From Wikipedia’s stock characters list page, given are two stock character
descriptions. Name two Harry Potter characters that are listed as examples in
Wikipedia for both (0.5*2).
a) Angry White Male - A person typically known as having a traditional
conservative viewpoint, especially in the context of U.S. politics,
characterized by opposition to racial quotas, political correctness,
affirmative action, and other liberal policies. (0.5)
a) Cat Lady - Old woman overly concerned with her cats. (0.5)

3
To which 1813 work
is Abhirami Girish, 2
time SJQ winner,
quizzer-blogger,
making a reference
to in the beginning
of this blog post?

4
X’s Book Club was a book discussion segment of something singularly
associated with X. The club was started in 1996, and ended its run in 2011. The
club recommended a total of 70 books. Due to the widespread popularity of
the club and its phenomenal reach, many times obscure titles went on to
become bestsellers.
X’s Book Club 2.0 was launched in 2012, and as the 2.0 suggests, it will have
widespread integration with digital media, ebook readers etc. Its logo is on the
next slide. The club was inaugurated with Wild by Cheryl Strayed. X?

5
William S. Burroughs’ first two novels were largely autobiographical. They both
draw largely from his experiences as a member of two marginalised sections
of society on accounts of his drug addiction and his sexuality respectively.
The first title (6 letters) is a term used to refer to opiate addicts. The second
title is defined by wiki as an umbrella term for sexual and gender minorities
that are not heterosexual or cisgender.
Name both the books.
(0.5*2)

6
Below is a recorded response of a particular Dota 2 character called Slardar.
The response is borrowed from a famous work by American author X who
achieved fame posthumously. X’s busts were awarded as the ______ awards
from their inception till 2015 but was retired due to the controversy regarding
X’s background history which may have been shrouded in a tiny bit of racism.
“And with strange aeons, even death may die”
X?

7
Often used in a pejorative sense when talking about non-ecclesiastical works,
it is used to talk about works of authors who are uncritical or reverential to
their subject matter. The term otherwise is used to mean the biography of an
ecclesiastical leader, such as a saint or otherwise.
WTGW?

8
Which 2011 novel begins thus.
“I scowl with frustration at myself in the mirror. Damn my hair – it just
won’t behave, and damn Katherine Kavanagh for being ill and subjecting
me to this ordeal. I should be studying for my final exams, which are next
week, yet here I am trying to brush my hair into submission. I must not
sleep with it wet. I must not sleep with it wet. Reciting this mantra several
times, I attempt, once more, to bring it under control with the brush.”

9
Tvtropes.org describes Feminist Fantasy as a trope where a woman is an
active center of her own story, makes things happen, saves the day etc. It lists
X as a literary example. Give X.
“X is perhaps one of the earliest examples of such a tale. While the story is
named for the titular ___ ____, he is a Decoy Protagonist that innocently goes
through the story being threatened by the _______. The true hero of the story
is Morgiana, the clever slave-girl that systematically outwits and kills the
_______ to protect her master. At the finale of the story, she is granted her
freedom and marries ___ ____'s son — a Gender Inversion of the Standard
Hero Reward.”

Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves

10.
Of Shakes’ 154 sonnets, the first 17 ones, traditionally called the procreation
sonnets, are addressed a ‘Fair Youth’ urging him to marry and have children in
order to immortalize his beauty by passing it to the next generation.
The blanked out word is the name of a device that Shakespeare used with
flair, to end scenes of plays on a high note. It also serves as a mnemonic
device and clarifies the metrical structure for the listener.
FITB in sonnet 17, given in the next slide.

If I could write the beauty of your eyes,
And in fresh numbers number all your graces,
The age to come would say 'This poet lies;
Such heavenly touches ne'er touched earthly faces.'
So should my papers, yellowed with their age,
Be scorned, like old men of less truth than tongue,
And your true rights be termed a poet's rage
And stretched metre of an antique song:
But were some child of yours alive that time,
You should live twice, in it, and in my _____.

Starred questions begin
11 - 17

*11) Name the character that is speaking.
A video of Jungle Book’s American trailer was played.
On YouTube, it is titled The Jungle Book Official US Teaser Trailer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcgJRQWxKnw

Kaa
(Half points were given for snake/python/boa)

*12) Author *13) Book
Below is an imagined review of a book in a certain author’s style. Name the
book and the author. (0.5*2)
What sort of wages does this magical woman make? Why does she allow her
unique and extraordinary gifts to be wasted on children, who have no money
at all? Why does she permit them to associate with a public factotum, who has
never mastered steel to his own will? Absurdities on absurdities. This magical
woman should be the iron mistress of a steel foundry, or the consort to a
leader of men, not tending to the worthless offspring of a visionless banker.

14*
Following are illustrations made of a 1990 book. Name ze book.

Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

15*
The given passage is from a 1981 crime, horror, thriller, psychological horror
novel.
Name the book.

15*
Steel bars covered the entire front of the cell. Behind the bars, farther than arm's reach, was a stout
nylon net stretched ceiling to floor and wall to wall. Through the barrier, Graham could see a table
and chair bolted to the floor. The table was stacked with softcover books and correspondence. He
walked up to the bars, put his hands on them, took his hand away.
The man lay on his cot asleep, his head propped on a pillow against the wall. Alexandre Dumas' Le
Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine was open on his chest. Graham had stared through the bars for about
five seconds when the man opened his eyes and said, "That's the same atrocious aftershave you
wore in court."
The man’s eyes are maroon and they reflect the light redly in tiny points. Graham felt each hair
bristle on his nape. He put his hand on the back of his neck.

Red Dragon
No points for Silence of the Lambs or Hannibal Lecter or anything

*16) X.
Pass Thru Fire is a book of collected lyrics authored by X. Here is Amazon’s
description of the book :
Containing a body of work that spans more than three decades, Pass Thru Fire
is a stunning collection of the lyrics of an American original. Through his many
incarnations-from proto punk to glam rocker to elder statesman of the avant
garde - X’s work has maintained an undeniable vividness and raw beauty,
fueled by precise character studies and rendered with an admirable shot of
moral ambiguity. Beginning with his formative days [...] and continuing
through his remarkable solo career-albums like [...] -Pass Thru Fire is crucial to
an appreciation of X, not only as a consummate underground musician, but as
one of the truly significant poets of our time.

*17) X and *18) Y.
X (3,4,8) is a 1961 book by Y published originally under the pseudonym Joseph
Kell. Y deliberately toned down his trademark love of vocabulary for the novel,
which uses a vocabulary of around 800 words. Y is most famous for a
dystopian satire published in 1962.
Its title is taken from a traditional Zen koan, a story, dialogue, question, or
statement, which is used in Zen practice to provoke the "great doubt" and test
a student's progress in Zen practice.
Cover on next slide.

17. One Hand Clapping (named after the koan Two hands clap and make a
sound, what is the sound of one hand clapping)
18. Anthony Burgess

19*
Shown is a comic strip from an 1985 strip titled The Rules from Dykes to Watch
Out For created by X. Two women, who resemble the future characters Mo
and Ginger, discuss seeing a film and the black woman explains that she only
goes to a movie if it satisfies some requirements. The white woman
acknowledges that the idea is pretty strict, but good. Not finding any films that
meet their requirements, they go home together.
Name the cartoonist X (OR) what are the two talking about, sth that became a
standard in feminist criticism, that was originally meant as ‘a little lesbian joke
in an alternative feminist newspaper.’

20.
*from a Sandman review*
At the beginning of this unusual story we are shown a scene similar to one from X. After
being imprisoned for decades Dream Lord must reclaim his objects of power: a pouch
of sand, a helm and a ruby. To reclaim one of them he's forced to undertake a journey
through the _2_. In the _3_ Dream is led through the Wood of Suicides. He travels the
same route _1_ once did in X. This central epic poem of Italian literature contains a
scene in which _1_ breaks a twig off one of the trees, which causes the tree to bleed. A
voice comes from the tree and _ hears the tale of Pier delle Vigne. He was a noble man
that, in a moment of weakness of will, took the irreversible action, and after a life of
noble service, he had been condemned forever.
ID the work X.

21
A book of history written by English historian Edward Gibbon, The History of
the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, traces the trajectory of Western
civilization from the height of the Roman Empire to the fall of Byzantium.
Gibbon claims that the Roman Empire succumbed to barbarian invasions
majorly due to a lack of civic virtue amongst its citizens.
X claimed that this book by Gibbon inspired him to create his own Empire,
despite there being very little similarity between the two works as well as the
two authors’ writing styles. X went on to create a trilogy of novels based on
this Empire after writing a few short stories in the 1940s.
What did he create?

The Galactic Empire in Foundation Series by Asimov

22
X is an essay by American transcendentalist Y who spoke out in favour of the
individual not allowing the government to overrule his/her conscience and
that it was the duty of the individual to make sure this did not happen so that
they would not end up becoming agents of injustice. X went on to inspire a
number of political leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, MLK Jr. etc. Gandhi went on
to adopt the title of X as the name of one his movements against the British
empire.
X? Y? (0.5*2)

Civil Disobedience
Henry David Thoreau

23.
______ _______ is a phrase coined by English drama critic Thomas Rymer in The
Tragedies of the Last Age Considere'd (1678) to describe how a work should
inspire proper moral behaviour in its audience by illustrating the triumph of
good over evil. The demand for ______ _______ is consistent in Classical
authorities and shows up in Horace, Plutarch, and Quintillian, so Rymer's
phrasing is a reflection of a commonplace.
On the following slide is a comic titled If He Shoots Further Than He Dreams,
that illustrates ______ _______. (may/mayn’t help)

24.
X is a 14th century collection of novellas that was published in English in 1886.
The book is structured as a frame story containing 100 tales told over ten
days.
In Italy during the time of the Black Death, a group of seven young women
and three young men flee from plague-ridden Florence to a deserted villa in
the countryside of Fiesole for two weeks. To pass the evenings, every member
of the party tells a story each night, except for one day per week for chores,
and the holy days in which they do no work at all, resulting in ten nights of
storytelling over the course of two weeks. Thus, by the end of the fortnight
they have told 100 stories.

25
James Dean made just three films, for which he was nominated twice for the
Oscars posthumously. His favorite book as a child and throughout his life was
X.
X is a ‘book for children that is written for adults’. The book is about
disillusionment with adult life and the dangers of being narrow-minded. Dean
loved the book so much that he always carried it on him. Near his crash site,
his friend William Bast inscribed a quote from this book - ‘What is essential is
invisible to the eye.’

Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

26
From an NY Times article dated 05/20/2007, titled ‘Celebrating, and Quarreling
Over, Xs’
Every May, they come. Thousands of slimy little athletes, primed for the
biggest event of their careers, the World Series of competitive ____ _______: the
Calaveras County Fair and _______ ____ Jubilee. Then, of course, it’s back to the
pond. But after nearly 80 years of peaceful _______, a civil war of sorts has
broken out among the human overseers of this annual, undeniably bizarre
event, which was inspired by Mark Twain’s classic 1865 tall tale about an
inveterate gambler and his gifted ____.
____ _______ please. No half-points, give both words.

27
He said in two of his letters after publishing,
"As a story, I think it is good that there should be a lot of things unexplained
(especially if an explanation actually exists);”
... And even in a mythical Age there must be some enigmas, as there always
are. X is one (intentionally)."
In another letter, the author states that X “was meant to represent 'the spirit
of the (vanishing) Oxford and Berkshire countryside”.
Who is X?

28
Attached is a
screenshot from the
website of this
literary service X. A
portmanteau of two
words both
representing what it
does, X claims it has
these available for
many books.

29
When initially used, it was mostly used as a catch all term for several kinds of
cheaper forms of literature available in the market at that point of time
though the term might suggest only one price point. Over the years it has
somewhat transcended meaning and has now more or less come to stand for
a quickly written, lurid potboiler and is used mostly as a pejorative term to
depict superficiality of a particular work.
WTGW bruh.

30
Given are lyrics of Omega Man by Iron Saviour. Which 1954 horror fiction
novel by Richard Matheson does the song reference.
The novel was made into films in 1964, 1971 and once more.

When the sun is up
A lonely man
Roams an empty city
Omnipresent death
Is all around
Riding on deserted streets
In bitter solitude
Silence all around
Without a human sound
The days passing by
In dullness and pain
His fatal creation
Is all that remains
He is the last man alive
The last man alive
Sentenced to survive
The last of his kind
Has seen Armageddon
Destroyer and redeemer
Beginning and end
He's the Omega Man

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