For this month’s contest, we’re excited to present a matching game for our National Book Award feature. As you may have read, our upcoming issue will contain a reassessment of the 1961 fiction prize. Contemporary authors Leah Stewart, Alexander Chee, Keith Lee Morris, John McNally, and Justin Tussing serve as the judges, documenting in essay form their process of narrowing the NBA contenders to a shortlist of five, then picking a new winner. You’ll want to check out the new issue to see which novel they selected as their number one, but in the meantime we offer this bit of trivia to test your knowledge of classic American fiction.
The five finalists are listed below, along with an excerpt from each work. Anyone willing to try his/her hand at matching the excerpts with the authors/titles will receive a free back issue (your choice). For those who answer correctly, we’ll pick one of you at random (Seriously! We found a randomizer online!) to win either a thermos, slingpack, or the upcoming issue.
To enter, simply post your comments on the blog by clicking the post title above.
We stop taking entries on Monday, so enter soon, and good luck!
- John Updike’s *Rabbit, Run*
- John Knowles’s *A Separate Peace*
- Flannery O’Connor’s *The Violent Bear It Away*
- Harper Lee’s *To Kill a Mockingbird*
- Wright Morris’s *Ceremony in Lone Tree*
a. With nothing to block it the wind flung wet gusts at me; at any other time I would have felt like a fool slogging through mud and rain, only to look at a tree.
b. Down the tracks to the east, like a headless bird, the bloody neck still raw and dripping, a tub-shaped water tank sits high on stilts. Bunches of long-stemmed grass, in this short-grass country, grow where the water drips between the rails.
c. He used to love to climb the poles. To shinny up from a friend’s shoulder until the ladder of spikes came to your hands, to get up to where you could hear the wires sing.
d. She was horrible. Her face was the color of a dirty pillow-case, and the corners of her mouth glistened with wet, which inched like a glacier down the deep grooves enclosing her chin.
e. It had taken him barely half a day to find out that the old man had made a wreck of the boy and that what was called for was a monumental job of reconstruction.
So I win something even if I get some wrong? (I definitely know the line from *A Separate Peace.*) Okay, I’ll give it a whirl.
1 + d
2 + a
3 + b
4 + e
5 + c
The quote from Rabbit Run is c. Knowles is a. O’Connor is b. To Kill a Mockingbird is d. Ceremony in Lone Tree is e. Can I get issue 5.2 (the one with Ted Sanders’ essay “To Scale”)?
I’m pretty sure a is Knowles, c Updike, and e O’Connor. I’m guessing b is Lee and d Morris?
Val
Ah, this is hard—but fun. I think I have it figured out.
Knowles/a
O’Connor/e
Lee/d
Updike/c
Morris/b
Am I right?!
I’d be happy with just the issue :). These are I think the answers are: 1. John Updike: C 2. John Knowles: A 3. Flannery O’Connor (from Wise Blood?): E 4. Harper Lee: D 5. Wright Morris: B.
1. John Updike’s *Rabbit, Run*
2. John Knowles’s *A Separate Peace*
3. Flannery O’Connor’s *The Violent Bear It Away*
4. Harper Lee’s *To Kill a Mockingbird*
5. Wright Morris’s *Ceremony in Lone Tree*
1 (Updike) is c … “He used to love to climb the poles. To shinny up from a friend’s shoulder [shoulders] until the ladder of spikes came to your hands, to get up to where you could hear the wires sing.”
I particularly enjoy the sentence that follows: “Their song was a terrifying motionless whisper.”
2 (Knowles) is a … “With nothing to block it the wind flung wet gusts at me; at any other time I would have felt like a fool slogging through mud and rain, only to look at a tree.”
The first part of this paragraph really engages the senses: “I started the long trudge across the fields and had gone some distance before I paid any attention to the soft and muddy ground, which was dooming my city shoes. I didn’t stop. Near the center of the fields there were thin lakes of muddy water which I had to make my way around, my unrecognizable shoes making obscene noises as I lifted them out of the mire.”
3 (O’Connor) is e … “It had taken him barely half a day to find out that the old man had made a wreck of the boy and that what was called for was a monumental job of reconstruction.”
4 (Lee) is d … “She was horrible. Her face was the color of a dirty pillow-case, and the corners of her mouth glistened with wet, which inched like a glacier down the deep grooves enclosing her chin.”
The continuation of that description is also entrancing: “Old-age liver spots dotted her cheeks, and her pale eyes had black pinpoint pupils. Her hands were knobby, and the cuticles were grown up over her fingernails.”
5 (Morris) is b … “Down the tracks to the east, like a headless bird, the bloody neck still raw and dripping, a tub-shaped water tank sits high on stilts. Bunches of long-stemmed grass, in this short-grass country, grow where the water drips between the rails.”
(I’m assuming the missing sentence and sentence fragment were left out because they contain a character’s name.)
Thanks for another challenging game! (and a great excuse to reread some cool passages)
Thanks to those who played our 1961 National Book Award mix-and-match game! Three people—Jodi Hader, Chelsie Bryant, and Laura S.—correctly matched each excerpt with its author. When we put their names into the randomizer, it chose Chelsie as the winner, so she will have her pick of prizes (thermos, slingpack, or issue). Everyone else gets a free back issue of his/her choice. Congratulations, all!
PS—PARTICIPANTS (whether you guessed correctly or not), please email your choice of issue and mailing address to editors@cincinnatireview.com.