NAQT Literature

One character in this series is a former pacifist who signifies his support for the war by saying “don’t monkey with the buzzsaw,” and jilts his former lover Anne Elizabeth Trent, causing her to die in a plane crash. In its final part, another character forces her homosexual ex-husband (*) Tony to become her chauffer, and becomes a movie star after exploiting wealthy aviation executive Charley Anderson. Joe Williams dies in a Parisian bar on Armistice Day in this trilogy’s second book, which ends with a section describing the Unknown Soldier, “The Body of an American.” The execution of Sacco and Vanzetti is described in this work’s 47th “Camera Eye” section, while its plot is interspersed with “Newsreels” and biographies of prominent Americans. Made up of The 42nd Parallel, 1919, and The Big Money, FTP, name this trilogy by John Dos Passos.

Key plot points this character is involved in include revealing the time of his departure for Moscow in the eighth part of the work he appears in, receiving a missing three thousand rubles in the eleventh, and becoming involved in the secondary love triangle involving Katerina. Though he wrote an extensive article on eccelestical law, he tells his younger brother that he has returned God’s ticket to salvation before relating a story about a bishop who tells a reborn Christ why he must be executed. He’s later driven insane by a devil who convinces him of his moral culpability in his father’s murder and the suicide of the real killer, Smerdyakov. For 10 points, name this middle Karamazov child, the brother of Dmitri and Alexei.

This author recited the lines “This our battle brings / One name of pity and one of hate / I, vanquished, bear the shame of defeat / And though he triumphs the conquest is a crime” from his masterpiece to a crowd as he committed suicide, according to Ammianus Marcellinus. His other major poem, an elegy for Virgil, won a prize at the First Quinquennial Neronian festival. His only surviving works are first ten books of his unfinished masterpiece, and 2 letters to his maternal uncle, the Younger Seneca, with whom this poet was sentenced to die for their participation in the Pisonian Conspiracy. Condemned in 65 CE by Nero, FTP, name this poet best known for an epic which he titled Bellum Civile, but which is more commonly called Pharsalia.

In the last scene of this work, a shoe-polish factory reopens and the main character tacks up a recipe for grass soup that doesn’t give people diarrhea. Its second scene takes place in Atlantic City, where Miss Fairweather seduces the protagonist, the new President of the Humans; the scene where he gives in is presumably skipped by the actress playing Sabina since she has a personal guest in the audience. The first scene takes place in Excelsior, New Jersey, where the protagonist has sent news home to Maggie about inventing the wheel, despite the impending wall of ice moving in. Focusing on the family of George Antrobus, FTP, identify this play by Thorton Wilder about characters who survive through the title expression.

The sequel to this work claims that Lawrence’s The Plumed Serpent is the best treatment of the Quetzcoatl myth and disputes Levi-Strauss on poetry’s translatability. A late section of it cites Breton’s Mad Love to claim that romantic love is not a free choice, while another discusses the difference between the sector of technicians and the Industrial Revolutionary Party. Its title derives from its opening claim that humans feel that their existence is “untransferable and precious” and that “Man is the only being who knows he is alone.” Written by the author of “Sunstone,” for 10 points, name this collection of essays published in 1950, best-known for its analysis of machismo in “Mexican Masks,” by Octavio Paz.

One of these learns that it has tentacles, one eye, one ear, and a disgusting mouth in a Juan Bosch short story about the “beautiful” one of Don Damian. A stone carving of a lonely figure falls off a cathedral after a melodious bird dies in a story about the image of a lost one by Saki. Essays on “The Primeval Mitosis” and “The White Race and its Heroes” appear in a book by Eldridge Cleaver about one “on ice,” while narrators called “I” and “you” journey to Lingshan in a Gao Xingjian novel about this type of mountain. St. John of the Cross wrote a poem about the “dark night” of one, and Korobotchka and Sobakevitch sell dead ones to Chichikov in a book by Nikolai Gogol. FTP, name these spiritual possessions, one of which is sold to the devil by Faust.

The manuscript containing the works of this author is named for its position as the tenth book on the top shelf near a bust of a Roman emperor: the Cotton Nero A X. This author’s best known work ends with the motto “Evil to him who evil thinks, " leading some scholars to believe it might have been written for the Order of the Garter. One of his works is a homily retelling various evils eradicated in the Old Testament, while another uses the example of Jonah’s impulsiveness as the opposite of the title virtue. Besides “Cleanness” and “Patience,” an elegy depicting mourning of a little girl and the speaker’s hope to see her in New Jerusalem is also attributed to him. Named for his assumed authorship of that allegorical elegy, FTP, name this unknown Medieval author also thought to have written “Gawain and the Green Knight.”

Probably the lamest task he ever had to complete was locating Mrs. Murdock’s Brasher Dubloon. One novel featuring him sees him finding a note from the dead Lennox with a Madison $5000 bill, while in another he gets involved, through Moose Malloy, with Helen Grayle, “a blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window.” He’s more famous for finding out that Eddie Mars had covered up the killing of Regan by femme fatale Carmen, whose sister was played on film by Lauren Bacall. For 10 points, name this simile-spouting hard-boiled PI, the protagonist of The Long Goodbye, Farewell, My Lovely and The Big Sleep, created by Raymond Chandler.

This story is set in a room featuring a bronze bust of Hippocrates and a portrait of Sylvia Ward, and one character in it conceives of a project to harness whales to icebergs in order to supply the East Indies with ice. After taking a withered rose from a nameless black book, the title character causes it to bloom by placing it in a vase, inspiring his four guests to drink from the champagne glasses in front of them. Mr. Medbourne, Mr. Gascoigne, and Colonel Killigrew are then inflamed by their sudden youthful passion to fight over the newly-young Widow Wycherly, but they all revert to their original ages once the effects of water from the Fountain of Youth wear off. FTP, name this Nathaniel Hawthorne short story about a scientist who shares his name with the author of Being and Time.

When the title character of this work is questioned by a man resembling Hitler, that man's partner pokes his head up the chimney and comes out looking like Al Jolson. Earlier in his life, the narrator had whistled “The Teddy Boys’ Picnic” with Mike to keep warm, shortly before sneaking into the open window of a bakery. This story ends with the narrator revealing that he has not turned away from his recidivist ways, as he is living off the 628 pounds from his last theft, which has occurred after he came down with pleurisy and left the Borstal. Colin Smith allows Gunthorpe to pass him and win the Blue Ribbon Prize Cup in order to deliberately lose a cross country race in, FTP, what short story by Alan Sillitoe?

In this author’s most recent play, an African-American ex-con named Black rescues an atheist intellectual named White from his attempt to jump in front of a subway train. Besides The Sunset Limited, he wrote about Ben Telfair, who attempts to learn the title profession from Papaw, in The Stonemason. His third novel provides a sympathetic depiction of Lester Ballard, a killer who keeps his victims’ corpses in a cave, while his fourth concerns the adventures of Cornelius, a friend of Gene Harrogate who has chosen to wander the slums of Knoxville. After Child of God and Suttree, he turned his attention to the West with the story of the Kid, who joins Glanton’s gang in hunting native Americans with the enormous bald killer Judge Holden. FTP, name this American author of No Country for Old Men, Blood Meridian, and The Road.

Jose Ortega y Gasset’s first published criticism argued that the scene at Master Pedro’s puppet show in this work is a metaphor for all reading. Its opening includes Petrarchan sonnets by Phoebus and Orlando, who claim they are not the title character’s equal. Towards the end, the title character plans a pastoral existence with the innkeeper whom he visited after meeting Cardenio in the moutains, and the barber whose wash basin he had stolen, after Bachelor Carrasco finally out-duels him under the name The Knight of the White Moon. The stories of Amadis of Gaul and other chivalric heroes inspire the title character to rename his horse Rocinante and embark on a series of adventures, including attacking a group of windmills. FTP, name this novel by Miguel de Cervantes.

One character in this play briefly strangles another for using the phrase “light the kettle” instead of “light the gas.” While reading the newspaper, one character becomes outraged over a young boy who blames his sister for killing a cat, while that character’s partner receives an envelope filled with matches mysteriously placed under the door. After the discovery of the title object, the characters send up all their food, and receive orders for an Ormitha Macarounda, bamboo shoots, and water chestnuts, presumably from the enigmatic Wilson. Ending with Ben being given orders to shoot his partner Gus, FTP, name this one-act Harold Pinter play about professional killers given bizarre commands through the title device.

This work unfavorably contrasts the “boast of heraldry” and “storied urn” with the title locale. After the narrator wonders if “lonely contemplation” will lead “some kindred spirit” to inquire about him, he is dismissed as “crazed with care, or crossed in hopeless love” by a “hoary-headed swain.” Warning ambition not to mock the “useful toil” of the “rude forefathers of the hamlet,” this poem describes the location of the title as “far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife.” Ending with a three-stanza epitaph for “a youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown,” FTP, name this poem beginning with the line “the curfew tolls the knell of parting day,” an elegy to the inhabitants of a rural cemetery by Thomas Gray.

Part 20 describes linguistic units from the letter to the sentence and discusses “simple” and “double” words, while the second-to-last section discusses irrational phrases, as when Ganymede is said to pour wine.  Part 6 notes that objects that are very large or small are not beautiful because they cannot be apprehended, and Part 15’s treatment of character claims Odysseus’s lament in Scylla is “inappropriate,” while Iphigenia’s prayer at Aulius is “inconsistent.”  It also defines “complex action” as involving scenes of Reversal, Recognition, and Suffering in its sections on Plot, after arguing for the unities of action, time, and place. For 10 points, name this work on tragedy by Aristotle.