Quiz, Part Deux: Jude and the Obscures
School’s out, as the great Mr. Cooper would say, for the summer.
So how ’bout a quiz for old times sake?
I’ve been pondering the necessity of artistic failure lately – trying to take comfort in the notion that even the best writers wrote bad books. Sometimes, my rationale goes, getting that bad one out of the way just makes room for the great one to follow.
So I put together a list of obscure novels by people who have also written massively well-known ones – not to equate popularity with quality, but trying to do this based on artistic merit presented a few too many problems that seemed insurmountable, at least in the time I had.
I wonder how many of these are truly obscure, and how many are simply obscure to me? As with the previous quiz, I think this is reasonably difficult. I’d be surprised if someone could get 10 of them right. I think I’d get six or seven, if I got lucky on a couple guesses.
Answers will be posted later in the day.
No Googling.
1 – Ratner’s Star
2 – Hadji Murad
3 – The Third Life of Grange Copeland
4 – Elinor and Marianne
5 – Duplicate Keys
6 – Sweet Thursday
7 – Pylon
8 – The Dean’s December
9 – The Professor’s House
10 – Jonah’s Gourd Vine
11 – Toward the End of Time
12 – The Twenty-Seventh City
13 – A Clergyman’s Daughter
14 – Caverns
15 – Deception Point
16 – A Group of Noble Dames
5 – Jane Smiley
Elinor and Marianne are the sisters in Sense and Sensibility, so is #4 Jane Austen?
Sadly, the only one I know is #15. Dan Brown. My mother loves those books.
Sweet Thursday is Steinbeck.
The Professor’s House is Cather
The Twenty-Seventh City is Franzen
Jonah’s Gourd Vine is Hurston
I think The Dean’s December is Bellow
Caverns is Ken Kesey’s book with a class of 1980s MFA students at the University of Oregon
Ratner’s Star: DeLillo
Pylon: Faulkner
Clergyman’s Daughter: Orwell
Dean’s December is Bellow. I have no idea about any of the others.
Answers (as per Shawn):
1 – Don DeLillo
2 – Tolstoy
3 – Alice Walker
4- Jane Austen
5 – Jane Smiley
6 – John Steinbeck
7 – William Faulkner
8 – Saul Bellow
9 – Willa Cather
10 – Zora Neale Hurston
11 – John Updike
12 – Jonathan Franzen
13 – George Orwell
14 – Ken Kesey
15 – Dan Brown
16 – Thomas Hardy