WELD / CO Lit 2012: Beauty is Tlooth, Tlooth beauty
Packet 03
1. The narrator of one section of this novel witnesses a dance based on the courtship ritual of the dove, and
compares himself to a Zeno beetle, which continues to play dead even if you pluck its legs off one by one. That
narrator contracts a disease which causes eruptions on his buttocks while on an elephant-hunting expedition
in the land of the Namaqua. The narrator of the other section of this novel runs away from his wife Marilyn to
stay at the Loco Motel with his son Martin, but stabs Martin when the police try to take him away. That narrator
discusses programming the father-voice as part of a mythographic report on improving propaganda efforts during
the Vietnam War. The two aforementioned sections are entitled “The Vietnam Project” and “The Narrative of
Jacobus Coetzee.” For 10 points, name this first novel of J. M. Coetzee.
ANSWER: Dusklands
2. The 28th stanza of this poem begins with a litany of interrupted phrases like “but how shall I…” and “reach
me a…” This poem describes how “Hope had grown grey hairs, Hope had mourning on” during the central
event. The speaker of the first section of this poem says “I am soft sift in an hourglass” and addresses God,
saying “Thou has bound bones and veins in me, fastened me flesh.” The second section of this poem begins
with the words of Death, who says “Some find me a sword; some the flange and the rail; flame, fang, or flood.”
One character in this poem calls out “O Christ, Christ, come quickly.” Another character is “pitched to his death at a
blow” when he “stir[s] from the rigging to save the wild woman-kind below.” This poem describes how the title ship
“on Saturday sailed from Bremen, American-outward-bound.” For 10 points, name this poem by Gerard Manley
Hopkins about the death of five Franciscan nuns.
ANSWER: “The Wreck of the Deutschland”
3. A checkers-playing robot named Checkers Charley loses to the protagonist of this novel because of a loose
connection. The protagonist views a propagandistic play in which a young engineer points out that John
Averageman is richer than Caesar could ever have dreamed of being. In another reference to Caesar, this
novel’s first sentence is “Ilium, New York, is divided into three parts.” The Shah of Bratpuhr tours America to
learn about its culture, but cannot understand how the residents of Homestead are not slaves. The protagonist of this
novel is up for a job at the Pittsburgh plant, but James Lasher and Ed Finnerty rope him into joining the Ghost Shirt
Society, which rebels against post-Second Industrial Revolution America. For 10 points, name this Kurt Vonnegut
novel about Paul Proteus, in which the automation of society is represented by the title instrument.
ANSWER: Player Piano
4. The main character of this story recalls hearing about a fish who stuck his head out of the water and spoke,
as well as two cows who went into a shop and ordered a pound of tea. The main character reads a letter
whose author complains about being given bones and balls of bread to eat. The fact that the Earth is going to
sit on the Moon, as foretold by the English chemist Wellington, troubles the narrator of this story, especially
since the Moon is repaired by an incompetent cooper. The narrator is confused by a newspaper which says that a
woman will occupy the throne, and soon after his journal entries begin to bear strange dates, such as “The year
2000: April 43rd” and “Marchember 86, between day and night.” The narrator of this story is beaten with a stick by
the Chancellor, who tries to convince him that he is a titular councillor. For 10 points, name this story by Nikolai
Gogol whose narrator believes himself to be the King of Spain.
ANSWER: “Diary of a Madman” [or “Zapiski sumasshedshego”]
5. In a science fiction novel by this author, Europe and Asia fight a massive war called the Ural War, the
deceivers fight a guerrilla war against Marduk, and Iceland’s volcanic energy is used to melt Greenland’s ice,
which proves disastrous when Greenland’s organic matter forms itself into giant destructive monsters. He
wrote about the post-war trauma of Edward Allison in a novel whose original title is Hamlet, Tales of a Long
Night. Like Schiller, he wrote a historical work about Albrecht von Wallenstein, and his other historical novels
include a tetralogy about the German Revolution of 1918-1919 and The Three Leaps of Wang Lun. He is best known
for a huge novel about the descent into the criminal underworld of a man who loses his arm when he is pushed out
of a car by a gangster, Franz Biberkopf. That novel was made into a 15-hour film by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. For
10 points, name this author of Berlin Alexanderplatz.
ANSWER: Alfred Döblin
6. This work refers to Henry James’ late style as “a Byzantine fabric of shuddering grandeur.” It quotes Lady
Caroline Lamb’s Glenarvon in comparing Lord Byron to Elvis Presley. This work says that “Infant Joy” is
“Blake’s most neglected major poem,” and claims that “The Crystal Cabinet” represents the entrapment of
the penis in the vagina. This work champions the little-known novel Fragoletta by Henri de Latouche, noting its
influence on Balzac’s Sarrasine and Gautier’s Mademoiselle de Maupin. This work contrasts the Venus of
Willendorf with the Bust of Nefertiti in a discussion of the Apollonian and the Dionysian, and compares Emily
Dickinson to the Marquis de Sade, who the author favors over Rousseau. It includes extensive discussion of the
“western eye” and androgynes in Western culture. For 10 points, name this work of literary criticism by Camille
Paglia.
ANSWER: Sexual Personae
7. One sonnet by this man asks “How can it be, Lady, as one can see from long experience, that the live image
sculpted in hard alpine stone lasts longer than its maker, whom the years return to ashes?” He wrote an
epitaph saying that “God wished to correct nature” by designing the subject’s face. The subject of that
epitaph was also the subject of a number of epigrams by this man with homosexual undertones. The speaker
of one of his poems yearns for his skin to be flayed and made into a garment for his beloved. That poem was given
the nickname “The Silkworm” by the translator John Addington Symonds. In addition to writing about the death at
fifteen years of age of Cecchino dei Bracci, he wrote a number of poems dedicated to Vittoria Colonna and
Tommaso dei Cavalieri. For 10 points, name this man whose poetry is not as well known as his artistic works, which
include The Dying Slave and the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
ANSWER: Michelangelo Buonarroti [accept either name]
8. One poem about these flowers describes them as “ribbed and torch-like” and notes that “not every man”
has them “in his house at soft September.” That poem endows these flowers with “the smoking blueness of
Pluto’s gloom” in connecting them to the Persephone myth, saying that “Persephone herself is but a voice.”
Another poem about this type of flower says that it blossoms “when frosts and shortening days portend the aged
year is near his end.” That poem describes its “sweet and quiet eye” and addresses this flower as “thou blossom
bright with autumn dew and coloured with heaven’s own blue.” For 10 points, name this flower, whose Bavarian
variety was written about by D. H. Lawrence and whose fringed variety was written about by William Cullen
Bryant.
ANSWER: gentians [accept more specific answers]
9. The film version of this novel includes a guy in a polar bear suit who appears in several scenes, including
one where he is juggling torches. It also includes several extended chase scenes, including one where jump
cuts show the title character throwing a pair of jeans to herself over the head of her pursuer. One character
in this novel is accused of being a “hormosessual,” while other characters include the widow Mouaque and the
lecherous cop Trouscaillon. Like Ubu Roi, it begins with a neologism, doukipudonktan, which is translated by
Barbara Wright as “howcanaystinksotho.” The basic plot of this novel is that the drag queen Gabriel is charged with
taking care of his precocious niece, who dreams of traveling on the title transportation system, even though it’s on
strike. For 10 points, name this novel by Raymond Queneau.
ANSWER: Zazie in the Metro [or Zazie dans le métro]
10. This work discourages communalism and narrow-mindedness, claiming that it impedes greatness. It
encourages cooperation between nations by noting that peace, freedom, prosperity and disaster are
indivisible. It describes how “a new hope comes into being” and “a new star rises.” This work mentions that
there is work to be done as long as there is suffering, since “the ambition of the greatest man of our generation
has been to wipe every tear from every eye.” This work, which pledges to never allow the “torch of freedom” held
aloft by the “Father of Our Nation” to be blown out, states that “now the time comes when we shall redeem our
pledge” and that “at the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom.”
For 10 points, name this speech delivered on the eve of Indian independence by Jawaharlal Nehru.
ANSWER: “Tryst with Destiny”
11. This poem describes how “poor birds, deceived with painted grapes, do surfeit by the eye and pine the
maw.” This poem uses the metaphor of an “oven that is stopp’d,” which “burneth more hotly,” to
demonstrate the strength of concealed feelings. One character in this poem calls another character a “cold
and senseless stone” and a “statue contenting but the eye alone.” The latter character says “Affection is a coal
that must be cool’d” to explain to another character why his horse ran away to pursue a mare. After the death of
her beloved, the first title character of this poem asks Death, “Grim-grinning ghost, earth’s worm, what dost thou
mean to stifle beauty and to steal his breath?” Earlier, the first title character of this poem “seizeth on” the other’s
“sweating palm” and repeatedly entreats him to kiss her. For 10 points, name this Shakespeare poem whose second
title character dies after being gored by a boar.
ANSWER: Venus and Adonis
12. A short story writer from this country wrote about a man whose girlfriend transforms into an affable fat
man every night in the story “Fatso,” and that writer’s bizarre stories are collected in books like The Girl on
the Fridge, The Nimrod Flipout and The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God. One novel from this country is
written as a series of one-sided conversations, told in reverse chronological order, about a family who used to
live in Greece but now live in this country. That novel, Mr. Mani, is by an author who won this country’s Bialik
Prize in 1989. Another author from this country wrote Only Yesterday and In the Heart of the Seas, and created a
quixotic character who wanders around Galicia looking for someone to marry his daughter in his most famous
novel, The Bridal Canopy. For 10 points, name this home country of A. B. Yehoshua and S. Y. Agnon which
publishes the newspaper Haaretz.
ANSWER: Israel
13. Near the end of this essay, the author recalls an argument about whether whipping an animal to death is
justified if the improvement in flavor is greater than the animal’s suffering. The author of this essay describes
the remorse he felt after giving a plum-cake which his aunt had baked for him to a beggar. It quotes
Coleridge’s “Epitaph on an Infant” in justifying the death of the title animal, who “might be content to die”
instead of becoming a glutton and a sloven. It tells of how Bo-bo accidentally set fire to his father Ho-ti’s cottage,
leading to the death of his livestock, which turned out to be a fortuitous circumstance, since it caused him to
discover the deliciousness of the title food, which, according to the author, is best if it is “a young and tender
suckling.” For 10 points, name this essay from Essays of Elia, the most famous of Charles Lamb.
ANSWER: “A Dissertation upon Roast Pig”
14. This author wrote a story whose title character is blackmailed by Louisa, who is the only other person
who knows that the tiger she supposedly killed actually died of heart failure. The main character of another
of his stories pretends to be the governess Miss Hope, and instructs Claude and Wilfrid to re-enact the rape of
the Sabine women as part of the title method of teaching history. He also wrote a story in which Harvey’s
attempt to give his nephews a model of a municipal dust-bin and a John Stuart Mill figurine is a failure, because
they play war games with them anyway. This author of “Mrs. Packletide’s Tiger” and “The Schartz-Metterklume
Method” wrote about Georg and Ulrich being attacked by wolves while trapped under logs in one story, and about
Mrs. Sappleton’s husband and brothers returning from a hunting trip in another. For 10 points, name this author of
short stories like “The Toys of Peace,” “The Interlopers,” and “The Open Window.”
ANSWER: Saki [or Hector Hugh Munro]
15. Robert Fraser wrote a monograph about the novels of this author, who wrote a novel in which Ababio
arranges the murder of Appia and blames Densu, in revenge for Densu’s refusal to accept the kingship. He
included the Cassandra-like Isanusi in a pan-African epic which allegorizes European colonizers as
“predators,” written as a response to Yambo Ouologuem’s Bound to Violence. He sent a number of angry
letters to Chinua Achebe after the latter criticized his most famous novel because it was set in a specific country.
That novel by this author of The Healers and Two Thousand Seasons takes its title from a phrase written on a bus
and is about a clerk who is pressured by his wife to accept bribes and who is contrasted with the rich Joseph
Koomson. For 10 points, name this Ghanaian author of The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born.
ANSWER: Ayi Kwei Armah
16. The speaker of one of this author’s poems recalls a conversation in which she is asked “Will you never
love me?” amongst the “hunted hurrying people” in a subway station. The introductory poem to one of her
volumes ends “And when I think of you, I am at rest.” That collection also contains the poems “Night Song at
Amalfi” and “Summer Night, Riverside,” and an interlude entitled “Songs Out of Sorrow,” and is called Love
Songs. The speaker of one of her poems says, “When I am dead and over me bright April shakes out her raindrenched hair, tho’ you should lean above me broken-hearted, I shall not care.” Another of her poems claims that
“not one would mind, neither bird nor tree, if mankind perished utterly.” That poem imagines “swallows circling
with their shimmering sound” and appears in a Ray Bradbury story of the same name. For 10 points, name this poet
of “There Will Come Soft Rains.”
ANSWER: Sara Teasdale
17. According to this work, the major defect of human material is that “it does not like to be considered
merely as human material.” One chapter of this work calls man the enemy of historical necessity, because he
persists in embracing hope and faith. Its final chapter shows how the fate of the Baltic nations teaches us the
failings of what the author calls the “new faith.” This work’s third chapter is about seven different variations
of the practice of disguising one’s heterodoxy by feigning orthodoxy, which is known as ketman. It opens with a
discussion of Murti-Bing pills, a plot device in the novel Insatiability by Stanisław Witkiewicz. This work’s central
chapters portray figures who gave in to the Communist state, described as the Moralist, the Disappointed Lover, the
Slave of History, and the Troubadour, or Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta. For 10 points, name this nonfiction work
by Czesław Miłosz.
ANSWER: The Captive Mind [or Zniewolony umysł]
18. A minor character in this novel has a name which is a pun on the phrase nihil obstat. That character
works for a company which builds a desert in the middle of Ohio. In this novel, a character orders nine steaks
at a restaurant as part of his plan to become so fat that he takes up the entire universe. At the end of this
novel, an animal dubbed Ugolino the Significant appears on a television show hosted by Reverend Sykes. That
animal also goes by the name of Vlad the Impaler. Stonecipheco is working on developing a pineal-gland-based
additive for their baby food products, and another company in this novel is the publishing house Frequent and
Vigorous, where the main character works as a switchboard operator. For 10 points, name this novel in which
Lenore Beadsman searches for her missing great-grandmother, the first novel by David Foster Wallace.
ANSWER: The Broom of the System
19. This play contains the Wildean line “I had no idea that poets nowadays were interested in literature,”
spoken by a character who calls Wilde an “Irish Gomorrahist.” That character has had a methodical
education, resulting in an intimate familiarity with aardvarks, abaci, and abstract art, although politically he
hasn’t gotten past anarchism. The repetition of the line “I have put the newspapers and telegrams on the
sideboard, sir” demonstrates the protagonist’s fading memory. One character in this play creates a poem by pulling
words from Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 out of a hat. One scene in this play is spoken entirely in limericks, and another
scene is a parody of the catechism chapter of Ulysses. This play, set in Zurich, consists of the reminiscences of
Henry Carr. For 10 points, name this Tom Stoppard play whose characters include Vladimir Lenin, Tristan Tzara,
and James Joyce.
ANSWER: Travesties
20. In this novel, a Mexican economist-historian is too proud to help his sick wife, forcing the narrator to drag
her along the street behind him, leaving a trail of urine. One character in this novel is cured of his phobia of
wheeled vehicles by going around and hitting children. Another character is a priest who thinks masturbation
isn’t a sin, founds an academy for prostitutes, and wins a fight by throwing hot pepper in Jaime Concha’s eyes.
In this novel, a Jehovah’s Witness named Gumercindo Tello threatens to castrate himself to prove that he didn’t rape
Sarita. One of the title characters has an irrational hatred for Argentines and works at his typewriter for ten hours a
day, which is why he confuses the characters in his stories with each other. Those stories are written as serials for
Radio Panamericana. For 10 points, name this novel about Mario Varguitas and Pedro Camacho, written by Mario
Vargas Llosa.
ANSWER: Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter [or La tía Julia y el escribidor]
TB. The narrator of this book calls Kamehameha III a “fat, lazy, negro-looking blockhead.” In one scene, the
narrator fashions a makeshift pop-gun which delights the people with whom he is living. The narrator of this
book describes a building frequented by several extremely old greenish men; that building, called the Ti, is
inaccessible to women. The narrator of this book witnesses a ritual which he calls the Feast of Calabashes, and he
encounters people such as the beautiful Fayaway and the dutiful servant Kory-Kory. At the beginning of this book,
the narrator escapes from the Dolly with his friend Toby, and they try to find the valley of the Happar, but end up in
the valley of the title tribe instead. This book’s sequel, which shares its name with a tree which grows on Nuku
Hiva, is called Omoo. For 10 points, name this “peep at Polynesian life” by Herman Melville.
ANSWER: Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life