Quiet Americans Trivia Quiz

Answer: Silent Cal

Calvin Coolidge was the 30th President of the United States, serving from 1923 to 1929. He was so quiet in private that he earned the nickname 'Silent Cal'. At dinner parties, he said almost nothing. One guest reportedly bet she could get more than two words out of him.

He replied, 'You lose.' He wasn't a weak president. He was simply a man of few words. When President Harding died suddenly in 1923, Coolidge was woken in the night at his family's Vermont farmhouse. His father, a notary public, administered the presidential oath of office by the light of a kerosene lamp.

He is the only president ever sworn in by his own father.

Answer: Amherst

Emily Dickinson was born in 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts, and spent almost her entire life there. In her later years, she rarely left the house at all. Local children remembered her as the woman in white, who was said to lower treats from an upstairs window. Fewer than ten of her nearly 1,800 poems were published during her lifetime.

After she died in 1886, her sister Lavinia found the poems hidden in her room and had them published. Only then did the world discover what Emily had been quietly writing for decades.

She is now recognised as a major figure in American poetry.

Answer: Desert Inn

Howard Hughes arrived in Las Vegas on Thanksgiving Day 1966 and checked into the top floors of the Desert Inn. When the hotel tried to throw him out to make room for high rollers, he simply bought the hotel. He spent most of the next four years living almost entirely inside his suite. He kept the curtains permanently closed and often sat in the dark, frequently naked, as his fear of germs became increasingly severe. His hair and nails grew for months without being cut, and he communicated with staff only through handwritten memos. On Thanksgiving Day 1970, he was secretly carried out on a stretcher and never returned to Las Vegas.

He died on 5 April 1976, aged 70, on a private jet flying from Acapulco to Houston, where he was seeking medical treatment. His six-foot-four frame weighed just 90 pounds. The FBI had to use fingerprints to identify him.

Answer: Go Set a Watchman

Harper Lee published 'To Kill a Mockingbird' in 1960 and then largely disappeared from public life. She gave almost no interviews and refused most requests for appearances. For 55 years, she maintained she had nothing more to say. In 2015, a manuscript written before 'To Kill a Mockingbird' was rediscovered and published as 'Go Set a Watchman'. Lee was 89 by then, nearly deaf and blind. Whether she fully consented to its publication was disputed by friends and family.

She died in 2016.

Answer: Bach

Glenn Gould gave his last public concert in April 1964, at the age of 31. He walked off stage and never performed live again. He spent the rest of his career in the recording studio, where he had complete control over every aspect of the sound. He became increasingly reclusive over time.

He avoided crowds and human contact, wore heavy coats and gloves even in summer, and communicated mainly by telephone. He is particularly associated with the music of Bach, especially 'the Goldberg Variations', which he recorded twice, once in 1955 and again in 1981, shortly before his death at 50.

Answer: New York

Nikola Tesla was a Serbian-American inventor and engineer responsible for developing the AC electrical system that powers the world today. He was also deeply solitary. He never married, had few friends, and in his later years became increasingly withdrawn.

He spent his final years alone in Room 3327 of the New Yorker Hotel in Manhattan. He walked to the park daily to feed pigeons and developed an intense attachment to one white pigeon in particular. He died there in January 1943, aged 86, found by a hotel maid.

His papers were seized by the FBI immediately after his death. The USA was deeply concerned that his research, particularly his work on directed energy weapons and his claimed 'death ray', might fall into enemy hands or be exploited by foreign powers.

Answer: Twin Lakes

Dick Proenneke was an American naturalist, craftsman and diarist who, at the age of 51, left modern life behind and built a log cabin by hand in the remote Alaskan wilderness. In 1968, he settled alone at Twin Lakes, deep inside what is now Lake Clark National Park and Preserve, with little more than hand tools and remarkable self-sufficiency. He filmed the entire process himself, and the footage was later used in the documentary 'Alone in the Wilderness'.

He wasn't running from anything. He simply preferred the company of mountains, wildlife and hard work to the noise of modern life. He lived at Twin Lakes for more than 30 years, maintaining his cabin, keeping meticulous journals and closely observing the natural world around him. In 1999, at the age of 82, declining health led him to leave Alaska and move to California to live near family. He died in 2003 at the age of 86.

Answer: 1995

Bill Watterson created 'Calvin and Hobbes' in 1985. It became one of the most popular comic strips in history, running in over 2,400 newspapers worldwide. On December 31, 1995, he retired the strip with a simple farewell and walked away. He gave almost no interviews before retiring and virtually none after.

He refused all requests to license 'Calvin and Hobbes' for merchandise: no toys, no T-shirts, no films. He briefly returned to cartooning in 2014 by drawing guest strips for fellow cartoonist Richard Thompson, whose work was helping to raise money for Parkinson's research.

Otherwise, he has remained almost completely out of public view.

Answer: Gravity's Rainbow

In 1963, Thomas Pynchon published his first novel, 'V.', and has barely been seen in public since. For decades, there were no confirmed photographs of him as an adult. He gave no interviews. When his 1973 novel 'Gravity's Rainbow' won the National Book Award in 1974, he sent comedian 'Professor' Irwin Corey to collect it on his behalf, during which a streaker ran through the hall. 'Gravity's Rainbow' has a reputation for being extraordinarily difficult to read.

He broke his silence slightly in 2004 when he made two appearances on 'The Simpsons', voicing himself with a paper bag over his head.

He continues to publish occasionally but remains one of the most private figures in American letters.

Answer: Cornish

'The Catcher in the Rye' was published by J.D. Salinger in 1951. He became famous overnight, but he hated it. By 1953, he had moved to a remote house in Cornish, New Hampshire, and began cutting himself off from the world. He published his last work in 1965 and then stopped entirely. He lived in Cornish for over 50 years, behind a high fence, rarely seen.

His first interview in 1953 was given to a local schoolgirl named Shirley Blaney, who approached him in a restaurant and simply asked. The interview was published more prominently than expected, which annoyed him so much that he refused all further interviews. His last widely reported interview came in 1980 when a reporter named Betty Eppes left a note at his post office saying she would be waiting by the Windsor-Cornish covered bridge. Salinger walked down and talked to her for 20 minutes, unaware she was secretly recording him. He continued writing until his death in 2010, but nothing was published.