Interesting Facts about World Writers

15 Points Per Correct Answer - No time limit  

1. What crusading writer ran for Governor of California in 1934, thirty years after he had become famous with a book exposing abuses in the meatpacking industry? Upton Sinclair John Updike Sinclair Lewis John Steinbeck

2. What writer first became famous with 'The Naked and the Dead', his World War II novel, and later ran for Mayor of New York in 1969, with Jimmy Breslin as his running mate? Philip Roth Truman Capote J. D. Salinger Norman Mailer

3. What Oklahoma town did the Joad family emigrate from in Steinbeck's 'The Grapes of Wrath'? Enid Tahlequah Guthrie Sallisaw

4. In Frederick Exley's autobiographical novel 'A Fan's Notes', what team was the author fanatically devoted to? Green Bay Packers New York (football) Giants Chicago Cubs Brooklyn Dodgers

5. Who accidentally killed his wife while trying to shoot a glass off her head? Jack Kerouac Norman Mailer Allen Ginsberg William S. Burroughs

6. Samuel Clemens started using the pseudonym 'Mark Twain' when he was 27. Where did that phrase come from? a term used by Confederate soldiers his cousin called him by that name a Mississippi riverboat phrase he saw it in a Charles Dickens' novel

7. What book begins, 'In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly-fishing. We lived at the junction of great trout rivers in western Montana, and our father was a Presbyterian minister and a fly fisherman who tied his own flies and taught others. He told us about Christ's disciples being fishermen, and we were left to assume, as my brother and I did, that all first-class fishermen on the Sea of Galilee were fly fishermen.' ? The River's Edge The Generous Years: Remembrances of a Frontier Boyhood Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance A River Runs Through It

8. Fill in the blank: 'His name was George F. _____________. He was forty-six years old now, in April, 1920, and he made nothing in particular, neither butter nor shoes nor poetry, but he was nimble in the calling of selling houses for more than people could afford to pay.' Babbitt Loman Walker Peterson

9. Who was such a poor public speaker that his 1949 Nobel Prize acceptance speech was greeted with only polite applause, because it was virtually unintelligible to the audience, but was universally acclaimed as one of the best acceptance speeches ever after it was published in the paper the following day? John Steinbeck Ernest Hemingway Norman Mailer William Faulkner

10. James Michener's last TV interview was about what? aiding Hungarian refugees after the 1956 uprising his experiences in the South Pacific during World War II his experiences as a hobo during the depression running JFK's Food For Peace Program