WELD / CO Lit 2012: Beauty is Tlooth, Tlooth beauty
Packet 10
1. The title of this novel comes from a poem which describes “the speckled vulva of the tiger-orchid” and
“outlandish phalloi haunting the travellers of its one road.” Hypocritical religious figures in this novel include
Lillian and Reverend Jerrod Brown, and one character changes his name to Ezekieli to please “Christian
ears.” A plane crash in this novel causes the death of a donkey. One character in this novel leads a revolt as a
student, but later becomes involved with politicians and businessmen, including Kimeria. One of this novel’s major
characters is a barmaid who serves a drink made from the Theng’eta plant. Set in the village of Ilmorog, its four
main characters include Karega and Abdullah, who lost a leg in the Mau Mau rebellion. For 10 points, name this
novel by Ngugi wa Thiong’o in which Munira burns down Wanja’s brothel.
ANSWER: Petals of Blood
2. This author wrote a historical novel about a double murder which took place in the West Fjords in the
early 19th century. Another of this author’s novels is about a shepherd who travels to the mountains every
year during Advent to look for sheep. Late in his career, he planned a series of five novels about his home
country, of which he completed only two, Vikivaki and The Black Cliffs. The most famous work of this author of
The Good Shepherd was originally published in three volumes, and deals with the two sons of the extremely rich
farmer Ørlygur. One of those sons, Ormarr, is an aspiring violinist, while the other, Ketill, wanders the wilderness,
ultimately returning as the title holy man. For 10 points, name this Icelandic author of Guest the One-Eyed.
ANSWER: Gunnar Gunnarsson
3. One character in this story remarks that it doesn’t matter how fat you are as long as you have a good
disposition. After one character indirectly chastises her daughter for being ungrateful, the protagonist of this
story shows her gratitude by shouting “Oh thank you, Jesus, Jesus, thank you!” The protagonist is called the
“sweetest white lady I know” by one of her workers, but fails to be comforted, after another character calls
her a warthog from Hell. A Wellesley student named Mary Grace throws a book called Human Development at the
protagonist of this story, who constantly imagines Jesus giving her the choice to be born as white trash or a black
person. At the end of this story, the protagonist sees a vision of souls entering heaven on a bridge. For 10 points,
name this Flannery O’Connor short story named for the epiphany experienced by Mrs. Turpin.
ANSWER: “Revelation”
4. The inhabitants of this location bury their dead facing upside down, since they believe that the Earth will
turn upside down when they are resurrected. Activities in this location include rope-dancing and a ceremony
involving a stick which the Emperor gives out colored threads to the participants. The two main political
parties here are distinguished by the height of their heels and are called Tramecksan and Slamecksan. The
narrator puts out a fire in the home of this location’s Empress by peeing on it, and also thwarts an invasion by tying
the enemy’s ships together. The son of one emperor of this island injured himself while breaking an egg from the
large end, leading to an edict which incited a war with the neighboring island, Blefuscu. The inhabitants of this
island refer to the narrator as “Man-Mountain” after tying him down and shooting him with tiny arrows. For 10
points, name this island inhabited by miniature people, visited by Lemuel Gulliver.
ANSWER: Lilliput
5. This work’s narrator describes completing the crossword clue “Sometimes you feel like ___” with “a
motherless child” even though the correct answer is “a nut.” As a student, the narrator of this work thought
that the line from “Rose Aylmer” about “a night of memories and sighs” contained a life lesson. The narrator
also describes experiencing the “vortex effect” and ponders “the question of self-pity.” This work frequently
quotes a line spoken by Gawain in The Song of Roland: “I tell you that I shall not live two days.” The narrator
refuses to throw away her late husband’s shoes because she thinks he will need them when he returns. The narrator
of this work repeatedly says “You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends,” referring to her husband John
Gregory Dunne’s sudden death from cardiac arrest, which happens while her daughter Quintana is in an induced
coma. For 10 points, name this memoir of mourning by Joan Didion.
ANSWER: The Year of Magical Thinking
6. This playwright discussed the critics’ assertion that the affection between Moses and Ramses was not
sufficiently developed in his play The Firstborn in an essay called “An Experience of Critics.” One of his plays
takes place near Ephesus at the tomb of Virilius, whose widow Dynamene plans to kill herself. He used the
Hungarian Revolution of 1848 as the backdrop for a play subtitled “A Winter Comedy,” The Dark Is Light
Enough. This author of A Phoenix Too Frequent wrote about the rape of Lucretia in Duel of Angels, which was an
adaptation of a play by Jean Giraudoux, much like his Tiger at the Gates. He also adapted plays by Rostand and
Anouilh, but remains best known for a verse play set in Hebble Tyson’s house, in which Thomas Mendip confesses
to imaginary crimes so that he will be hanged, while Jennet Jourdemayne tries to avoid being executed for
witchcraft. For 10 points, name this playwright of The Lady’s Not for Burning.
ANSWER: Christopher Fry
7. Two characters convince the title character of this play that it is his fault that Agyrrhius farts so loudly,
that adulterers are punished, and that triremes are equipped. Another character tries to convince those two
characters that their plan will result in disaster because their brides will not be able to wear beautiful gowns
if they get married, and the slave trade will cease to exist. Other characters in this play include a just man,
the protagonist’s friend Blepsidemus, and Hermes, who intervenes at the end. The main character of this play takes
a blind beggar home with him after being instructed by the Delphic oracle to take home the first man he meets.
Chremylus restores that beggar’s eyesight after it is revealed that the latter is actually the title god, thus overturning
the economic system of Athens. For 10 points, name this Aristophanes play about the personification of riches.
ANSWER: Plutus [or Wealth]
NOTE TO MODERATOR: If you’re uncomfortable reading the second sentence, just read it as “… a pilot named
David Anderson.”
8. This author’s novel The Seafarers was not published until forty years after his death. In another of his
novels, Roger Hargreaves hears the story of a pilot unfortunately called Nigger, though his real name is
David Anderson. This author of In the Wet wrote about an aircraft engineer named Connie Shaklin who
founds a new religion in the novel Round the Bend. He wrote a novel whose title comes from John Masefield’s
poem “The Wanderer,” in which Theodore Honey works as a scientist researching metal fatigue for the RAE. He
also wrote a novel in which the Australian government provides free suicide pills to citizens so they can kill
themselves rather than die from radiation poisoning after World War III. For 10 points, name this Australian author
of No Highway and On the Beach.
ANSWER: Nevil Shute [or Nevil Shute Norway]
9. The title character of this play refers to a lily as “new-blown and ruddy as St. Agnes’ nipple.” One
character in this play rants about “some unsuspected isle in the far seas” after overhearing a song about
Caterina Cornaro. In this play, Sebald and Ottima argue about whether they were right to murder Ottima’s
husband Luca. Another scene of this play concerns the soon-to-be-married Jules and Phene. Luigi ponders
the song “A King Lived Long Ago” in this play, but it is unclear whether he is dissuaded from his plan to
assassinate an Austrian official. Famously, the author of this play mistakenly used the word twat to refer to part of a
nun’s habit. The aforementioned characters are all influenced by the title character as she walks by, singing lines
like “God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world.” For 10 points, name this play by Robert Browning.
ANSWER: Pippa Passes
10. This conflict is the subject of the novel The First Garment by the Georgian writer Guram Dochanashvili.
Another work about this conflict notes that one of its leaders saw virtue as “a kind of impiety almost,” a line
which is quoted by Borges in “Three Versions of Judas.” That work about this conflict features characters
such as the Marshal de Bittencourt and Major de Brito, and is a non-fictional account of this conflict, divided
into sections called “The Land,” “The Man,” and “The Fight.” The author of that work was the basis for the
character of the near-sighted journalist in another novel about this conflict. In that novel, Galileo Gall is tricked into
becoming a gun smuggler, and one side in this conflict is led by Antonio Conselheiro. For 10 points, name this
conflict depicted in Euclides da Cunha’s Rebellion in the Backlands and Mario Vargas Llosa’s The War of the End
of the World.
ANSWER: War of Canudos
11. A novel by this man includes a passage in which the narrator argues that the poetry he had written is not
real poetry because it was not based on life experience. That novel ends with an interpretation of the story of
the prodigal son which claims that he wanted to find out what it is like not to be loved. Another prose work
by this man praises the works of the Danish author Jens Peter Jacobsen, who influenced this author. This
author of a series of ten letters to Franz Kappus, Letters to a Young Poet, was greatly admired by William Gass,
who wrote a book about “reading” this author. He wrote about a woman who whirls around surrounded by fire
before stamping it out in one poem, and he wrote about an animal who “paces in cramped circles” in its cage in
another poem. For 10 points, name this poet of “Spanish Dancer” and “The Panther” as well as the collections
Sonnets to Orpheus and Duino Elegies.
ANSWER: Rainer Maria Rilke
12. One of this author’s characters is described by Hugh Wentworth as a “blond beauty out of the fairy-tale”
at a Negro Welfare League dance. Another of her characters turns down a marriage proposal from a Danish
artist but ends up marrying Reverend Green. That character quits teaching at Naxos in part because she is
discouraged from expressing her individuality by wearing colorful clothing. In addition to writing a novel
about Helga Crane, she wrote a novel whose narrator is disturbed by the bigotry of John Bellew, who declares that
he would never marry a black woman, even though he has unknowingly done just that. That novel ends by noting
that the jury returned a verdict of death by misadventure, leaving the reader to decide whether or not Irene Redfield
pushed Clare Kendry. For 10 points, name this Harlem Renaissance novelist of Quicksand and Passing.
ANSWER: Nella Larsen
13. One response to this poem is a quatrain which reads, “Though the great song return no more there’s keen
delight in what we have: the rattle of pebbles on the shore under the receding wave.” The title character of
another response to this poem thinks about “what his whiskers would feel like on the back of her neck” and
says “one or two unprintable things” because she is angry at being “addressed as a sort of mournful cosmic
last resort” by the author of this poem while they are standing “with the cliffs of England crumbling away behind
them.” This poem is read to Mildred by Guy Montag to convince her of the worth of literature in Fahrenheit 451,
and it is parodied in an Anthony Hecht poem about a “bitch.” For 10 points, name this poem which compares life to
“a darkling plain swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,” written by Matthew Arnold.
ANSWER: “Dover Beach”
14. This section of a larger work is parodied in a scene in which Violetta angers Camillo by describing how
much she wants to sleep with Fontinelle, using “speaking French” as a euphemism for sex. That scene
appears in Thomas Dekker’s Blurt, Master Constable. This section of a larger work is enacted by Elma and a
drunken Dr. Lyman in William Inge’s Bus Stop. In it, one character notes that Jove laughs at lovers’ perjuries and
makes reference to the inconstancy of the moon. That character’s eyes are compared to “two of the fairest stars in all
the heaven,” and she is beseeched to “arise … and kill the envious moon.” In this scene, one character is asked to
“deny thy father and refuse thy name” by his lover, who declares that “parting is such sweet sorrow.” For 10 points,
name this famous scene from Romeo and Juliet.
ANSWER: the balcony scene [prompt on Act II, Scene 2 of Romeo and Juliet]
15. This author first gained fame for a novel about Anne Desbaresdes, who witnesses a murder at a café while
at her son’s piano lesson; that novel is named after a musical direction from the first movement of a sonatina
by Diabelli. The title character of one of her novels is abandoned by her fiancé, Michael Richardson, and ends
up marrying Jean Bedford, although she is also involved with Jacques Hold. This author of Moderato
Cantabile and The Ravishing of Lol V. Stein won the Prix Goncourt for a novel set in colonial Vietnam, about a
fifteen-year-old girl who has a love affair with a 27-year-old Chinese man, but she may be best known for a work in
which a French actress and a Japanese architect argue about memory and forgetfulness. For 10 points, name this
author of The Lover who wrote the screenplay for Hiroshima mon amour.
ANSWER: Marguerite Duras
16. She wrote a poem in which the place name “Glens Falls” is split between two lines, with only the final “s”
in the second line. Another poem from the same collection describes the corpse of a child which is “all white,
like a doll that hadn’t been painted yet.” She also wrote a poem which contains the exclamation “Be careful
with that match!” and says that “some comic books provide the only note of color” in the title location. This
author of “First Death in Nova Scotia” wrote a poem whose speaker reads National Geographic while waiting for
Aunt Consuelo to finish her dentist appointment. The speaker of another of her poems catches a “tremendous fish”
but ultimately lets him go. This author of “In the Waiting Room” and “The Fish” is perhaps best known for a poem
which instructs the reader to “lose something every day” and “practice losing farther, losing faster.” For 10 points,
name this poet of “Filling Station” and “One Art.”
ANSWER: Elizabeth Bishop
17. The preface to one work in this genre notes what a strange thing it is to while away idle hours by sitting in
front of an inkstone all day. Another work in this genre opens with a sentence which echoes Heraclitus by
emphasizing the changeableness of rivers. That work describes disasters including a fire, a famine, and an
earthquake, which catalyze the author’s decision to become a Buddhist monk and move into a 10-square-foot
dwelling. That work is “An Account of My Hut” by Kamo no Chomei, which is one of the major works in this genre
along with Yoshida Kenko’s Essays in Idleness. The name of this genre literally means “as the brush moves.” The
characteristic works of this genre consist of essays recording the personal observations and thoughts of the author.
For 10 points, name this genre of Japanese literature exemplied by the Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon.
ANSWER: zuihitsu
18. One digression in this novel compares the work of a sculptor to the paintings of Raphael, and another
calls a certain character a “Machiavelli in a petticoat” because she is a courtesan with a semblance of virtue.
That character pretends to go for a walk in the Tuileries so that the Baron does not know that she is with his
rival, who has never forgiven him for stealing Josépha from him. Baron Montes, known as the Brazilian, is one
suitor of Valérie, and he ultimately poisons both Valérie and her husband out of jealousy. One character in this novel
poses as Delilah for the Polish sculptor Wenceslas Steinbock, and other characters include the naively virtuous
Adeline, who is married to Hector Hulot. The title character of this novel is a member of the Fischer family, and she
schemes to destroy her extended family. For 10 points, name this novel by Honoré de Balzac whose companion
novel is called Cousin Pons.
ANSWER: Cousin Bette [or La Cousine Bette]
19. In this novel, giant fleas known as chong pir are encountered by the crew of the Saksaul as they travel
underneath the sand. Dahlia’s mother leaves her husband and runs off with the magician Zombini in this
novel, which also sees one group opposed by the Trespassers while visiting a time travel conference at
Candlebrow University. One character in this novel, who may be a legendary dynamiter named the
Kieselguhr Kid, is assassinated by Deuce and Sloat. The idea of bilocation recurs in this novel, often in the form of
a mineral known as Iceland spar. Dramatizing events such as Tesla’s experiments, labor disputes in Colorado, and
the Tunguska Event, this novel includes characters like Yashmeen Halfcourt, Lew Basnight, and Scarsdale Vibe. For
10 points, name this novel which features the skyship Inconvenience and its crew, the Chums of Chance, Thomas
Pynchon’s longest novel.
ANSWER: Against the Day
20. One of his poems ironically says “He that first invented thee, may his joints tormented be” in reference to
the title concept. Another of his poems calls his son, who died at the age of seven, his “best piece of poetry.”
That first poem is a satirical work which inveighs against rhymed poetry but is itself rhymed. He wrote a
poem which praises a house even though it is not “built to envious show of touch or marble, nor can boast a
row of polished pillars, or a roof of gold.” That poem, which was influenced by Horace and itself influenced many
later country house poems, is “To Penshurst.” This author of “A Fit of Rhyme Against Rhyme” and “On My First
Sonne” is better known for a poem which tells the addressee to “leave a kiss but in the cup and I’ll not look for
wine” after telling her to “drink to me only with thine eyes.” For 10 points, name this poet of “To Celia.”
ANSWER: Ben Jonson
TB. The protagonist of this man’s major work says “Most white people I know are quite proud of having
made Negroes into Bigger Thomases” during a discussion of Native Son and Lillian Smith’s Strange Fruit
with Tom Leighton. One of his characters is killed by the rabble-rouser Tomsson Black. This author of the
autobiographical works The Quality of Hurt and My Life of Absurdity also wrote a novel in which a large sum
of money which was intended for Deke O’Hara is stolen and hidden in a bale of cotton. That novel centers on two
characters who also appear in the novels Plan B and The Real Cool Killers. He is most famous for a novel in which
Madge Perkins accuses Bob Jones of rape, although his most enduring characters may be the Harlem detectives,
Coffin Ed Johnson and Gravedigger Jones. For 10 points, name this author of If He Hollers Let Him Go.
ANSWER: Chester Himes