The War Between the Tates Trivia Quiz

Answer: George Kennan

Brian is a huge fan of George Kennan and incorporates his principles of separate spheres of influence into his family life; Brian will not interfere with Erica's management of the household, and in return, she stays out of his professional life. She is largely responsible for Matilda and Jeffrey, their obnoxious and rude teenage children. Brian also believes that, like Kennan, he is misunderstood. He has written several articles and offered to work for political parties across the spectrum as an advisor, albeit without success, and is also working on a book about Kennan.

The other philosophers are all people to whom Brian compares his colleagues during a departmental meeting. John Randall, a veteran professor, is Cordell Hull; Chuck Markowitz, a young and radical professor, is Castro; and C. Donald Dibble, a misogynistic right-wing professor, is Metternich. Another professor who prefers not to take sides, Hank Andrews, is Niccolo Machiavelli.

Answer: Corinth

Corinth is in New York and is based on the city of Ithaca, home of Cornell University. Alison Lurie lived there and also taught children's literature and writing at Cornell, where she was named the F.J. Whitton Professor of American Literature in 1976.

'Foreign Affairs', which won the 1985 Pulitzer Prize, is also set in Corinth. It features Leonard Zimmern, the ex-husband of Erica Tate's friend Danielle, who is a literary critic using the name L.D. Zimmern. Ruth 'Roo' Zimmern, Danielle's older daughter, also appears as an adult and is in a failing marriage with Fred Turner, a colleague of the heroine Vinnie Miner. Vinnie later befriends Roo, although her father gave Vinnie's book a negative review. Danielle also appears, with her new husband Bernie.

Answer: WHEN

After having a row with Matilda and Jeffrey at breakfast, Erica has a cry and then gets a call from Helen, the Political Science office secretary, who says that there is a letter for Brian (who is out of town) and that Danielle, who works in the French department, will deliver it. Danielle brings the letter over while Erica is making lemon cookies. The letter turns out to be a love letter from Wendy Gahaghan, a student who is having an affair with Brian.

Danielle and Leonard have had an acrimonious divorce and this causes difficulties for the Tates, as Leonard is still friends with Brian while Danielle is still friends with Erica. Both Danielle and Leonard are very bitter about the divorce and while Leonard has become increasingly misogynistic, Danielle has joined a feminist group called Women for Human Equality Now, or WHEN for short. She is considering changing her name to Sarah, her middle name, as she dislikes having a derivative of a man's name. Several female students at the university are also members. Erica later attends a couple of WHEN meetings, but finds them too anti-men.

Answer: Bookshop

Wendy and her friends hang out at the Krishna Bookshop, a shop that sells books on various New Age subjects and religions, and also hosts lectures, workshops and meditation sessions. Brian and his fellow professors see the shop as an enemy territory, as it encourages sloppy thinking and is distracting the students from their work. Wendy tells Brian in a letter that she is pregnant and is leaving town; he panics, phones her and visits her flat, where another tenant mentions seeing her carrying a suitcase. Brian thinks she might have gone to the Krishna Bookshop.

Brian goes to the bookshop and asks a couple of people if they have seen Wendy, but she has not arrived at the bookshop yet, so he talks to Zed, the owner. Zed lives in the shop and sometimes gives books away - Wendy is one of the people he has given a book to - and reveals that Wendy has been talking to him about Brian by mentioning Brian's star sign. Brian gets back at Zed by persuading him to reveal his real name, Sandy Finkelstein. He is later revealed to have known Erica at college.

Answer: She vomits up the food Erica gave her and says she has morning sickness.

Erica comes home to find a young blonde woman with a suitcase sitting outside her house, and the woman reveals that she is Wendy and has come to apologise to Erica before she leaves town. Erica awkwardly invites her in and Wendy apologises for having an affair with Brian; she is worried that she is distracting Brian from completing his book about George Kennan. Erica offers Wendy food and although Wendy refuses at first, she has a coffee and the rest of Erica's tuna sandwich. She then vomits into the sink and Erica lets her rest on the sofa.

Wendy regrets eating the sandwich and Erica is unsure why, as there was nothing wrong with it, until Wendy offhandedly mentions morning sickness. She confirms that she had a positive test and is going to have an abortion. Erica phones her doctor and tries to talk to him about Wendy, but the doctor assumes Erica means herself and prescribes her tranquillisers. She also phones Brian in a rage and tells him not to come home. Brian panics, goes to a motel and phones Leonard Zimmern, who is in bed with his girlfriend. He later moves into a flat.

Answer: The Frick Collection

Brian makes an arrangement with an abortionist and agrees to meet Wendy at the Frick, as it is nearby. While there, he looks at the women in the paintings in the Fragonard Room and wishes Wendy looked and acted more like them. He also compares himself to Reason and Wendy to Error. After waiting for some time, he phones Wendy's mother and discovers that she and Linda, her room mate, have gone back to university. He is forced to rearrange the appointment with the abortionist, who is not pleased as he has given up time with his family. On the way back to Corinth, Brian picks up two student hitch-hikers, Sara and Stanley, and fantasies about raping Sara. He also recommends Dibble's class to her, knowing that the two will hate each other.

Brian goes back to his flat and finds Wendy there. Wendy tells him that she decided not to have the abortion because the I Ching reading she got convinced her not to. Brian is furious and hits her.

Answer: False

Roo does not have a horse, although she wants one and Dr Kotelchuk arranges riding lessons for her. She loves animals and has several pets, including a dog called Pogo, who was injured in a dog fight. The Zimmerns took her to the vet and Dr Kotelchuk treated her. He is a conservative widower who comes to visit the Zimmerns, ostensibly to check on their pets, but one day he comes to their house after the girls have left for school and rapes Danielle on Roo's bed. Danielle tries to fight him off, but ultimately lets him have his way with her because he saved Pogo's life and she has a coil inserted, so cannot get pregnant.

Dr Kotelchuk apologises for raping Danielle, but ends up raping her again because she answers the door in a nightgown which, to him, is an invitation to sex. However, Danielle admits to Erica that she enjoyed it and that Dr Kotelchuk wants to take her for dinner at a fancy restaurant. While Erica and Danielle are dressing for Danielle's party, Danielle reveals that Dr Kotelchuk wants to marry her and she is starting to fall in love with him. Erica is disgusted, thinking that Danielle is settling for less.

Answer: Through a window

Linda, Wendy's housemate, her friend Jenny and Sara are among the women who sign up for Dibble's classes, and they groan loudly whenever he makes a sexist comment. Brian advises Linda and Jenny to hide tape recorders in their clothes and tape Dibble's comments. The women write a letter demanding that Dibble apologise, but he refuses, and Sara decides that they need to take drastic action. The day after the meeting, Linda phones Wendy to tell her that the women have barricaded Dibble in his office. Brian refuses to let Wendy join in.

Brian hatches a plan with the other members of staff and enters the room with a length of rope, after the women agree to let him talk to Dibble alone. He helps Dibble climb down the rope and out the window, but the women notice that Brian helped him escape and when Brian tries to escape too, they refuse to let him leave for two hours. Brian appears on the local news and becomes a hero to several anti-feminist groups, while Dibble resigns.

Answer: Ostrich

After Erica and Brian separate, Erica starts spending more time with Sandy Finkelstein, whose real name is Sanford. She and Danielle had known him at Harvard, where he had cycled through courses before dropping out and moving to Japan. The two of them go to Danielle's party and enter a sexual relationship. Sandy admits that one reason why he changed his name to Zed was because of the 'Sanford' books and Erica turning him into an ostrich, which he has mixed feelings about.

Sandy and Erica take drugs together in the bookshop and Erica starts hallucinating. While she enjoys the trip at first, she and Sandy begin to have sex and she panics, hearing an alarm in her head. Sandy reveals that he heard a voice from the wastebasket telling him to give up the bookshop because too many people are reliant on him and treating him like a guru. He asks Erica to come with him, but she refuses because she has to stay with her children.

Answer: Wendy doesn't know

Brian is part of the committee organising the Peace March, not least because it is good PR and hanging out with Wendy and her friends has made him aware of the anti-war movement. He discovers that Wendy is pregnant when he comments on her weight gain and tells her she needs to lose a few pounds, and she says that will be impossible as she is only going to get bigger. She reveals that she has been flushing her contraceptive pills down the toilet and only pretending to have periods.

Brian wants to marry Wendy as he does not want his child to deal with the stigma of being illegitimate, but on questioning, Wendy does not know who the father is, as she has also had sex with Ahmed, an engineering student, during the Christmas period. Ahmed is Muslim and cannot marry Wendy, but Ralph, a filmmaker and old friend of Wendy's, has agreed to help her raise the child. She is planning to move to a commune in California with him after finishing her exams. Wendy also tells Erica about the baby.

Erica and Brian march with separate groups; she is part of a WHEN contingent, which also involves Danielle, and Dr Kotelchuk and Wendy are also on the march. Sandy is not there, as he has left town and is apolitical anyway. While he and Erica part on awkward terms, Erica's drug trip has inspired her and made her appreciate the beauty in mundane objects.