Character assassinations in fiction – quiz

Elections are a traditional time for people's good names to be ground into the dirt. But fiction is the spiritual home of the elegant slur and the well-crafted slander. How well do you know your bookish dirty tricks?
  
  


  1. Why is George Eliot’s Silas Marner driven out of his home city?

    1. Malicious rumours suggest he plans to kidnap a young girl

    2. He is ridiculed for poor dress sense

    3. He is falsely accused of stealing his church’s funds

    4. Gossip suggests he secretly has two kitchens in his apparently humble cottage

  2. When Blanche Ingram attends a gathering at Thornfield Hall in Jane Eyre, what does she say about governesses that so insults Jane?

    1. That they are mean and manipulative women

    2. That they are either detestable or ridiculous

    3. That they are doomed to a life without marriage

    4. That their profession is beset with impossible-to-sack slackers and is in urgent need of reform

  3. In Shakespeare’s play, how does Iago persuade Othello that Cassio has been having an affair with Desdemona?

    1. Within earshot of Othello, he draws Cassio out about his relations with the courtesan Bianca, but muffles the sound of her name so Othello is left with the impression his wife has betrayed him

    2. Under cover of darkness, he steals around Venice carving “Desdemona 4 Cassio 4 Ever x” into walls and trees

    3. He steals some of Desdemona’s distinctive perfume and, while Cassio is visiting the public baths, saturates Cassio’s robes in the scent - then sniffs noisily in the two men’s company

    4. He forges a secret memo from the French ambassador reporting that Desdemona has been seen kissing Cassio

  4. Which recently deceased author said: “Character assassination. What a wonderful idea. Ordinary assassination only works once, but this one works every day.”?

    1. PD James

    2. Iain Banks

    3. Sue Townsend

    4. Terry Pratchett

  5. Which Romantic poet was described in Blackwood’s magazine as “a boy of pretty abilities, which he has done everything in his power to spoil”?

    1. Wordsworth

    2. Keats

    3. Shelley

    4. Leigh Hunt

  6. Which American writer inspired this famously slanderous obituary by RW Griswold in the New York Daily Tribune? </br>“He had, to a morbid excess, that desire to rise which is vulgarly called ambition, but no wish for the esteem or the love of his species, only the hard wish to succeed, not shine, not serve, but succeed, that he might have the right to despise a world which galled his self-conceit.

    1. Edgar Allan Poe

    2. Mark Twain

    3. Henry James

    4. Jack London

  7. Gore Vidal was a man of many unforgiving judgments – but who was he referring to when he said: “Oh, he comes on like the worker's son, like a modern-day DH Lawrence, but he's just another boring little middle-class boy hustling his way to the top if he can do it."

    1. Truman Capote

    2. Norman Mailer

    3. John Updike

    4. Irvine Welsh

  8. "An unembarrassed sense of what he is owed as an embattled, literary immortal-in-waiting pervades his book," wrote Zoë Heller of which fellow novelist’s memoir?

    1. Salman Rushdie's Joseph Anton

    2. Martin Amis's Experience

    3. Julian Barnes's Nothing to Be Frightened of

    4. Philip Roth's The Facts

  9. In The Human Stain by Philip Roth, Coleman Silk is driven out of his university job after he is falsely accused of racism against two black students. What his accusers do not know is that …

    1. Silk is himself African American, but has “passed” as white since his military service

    2. Silk was a hero of the 60s civil rights movement, and was firebombed out of his childhood home by the Ku Klux Klan

    3. Silk’s two accusers are reformed members of a far-right political cult who had attempted to kill the Revd Jesse Jackson

    4. Silk has just completed a book–length study of institutional racism in US higher education

  10. “Tremendously overrated, a bad writer, a dishonest writer, but she really belongs to the past ... I once said in an interview that every word she writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the.'" Which peer was novelist Mary McCarthy referring to?

    1. Lillian Hellman

    2. Erica Jong

    3. Susan Sontag

    4. Jane Austen

Solutions

1:C, 2:B, 3:A, 4:D, 5:B, 6:A, 7:C, 8:A, 9:A, 10:A

Scores

  1. 0 and above.

    Appalling. We have officially broken you, and you will be thrown out of every bookshop you enter from now on

  2. 4 and above.

    Your name is not as good as it once was, but you are not yet ruined. Have another go and you might claw back some respect

  3. 8 and above.

    Brilliant. Your reputation as an awesomely well-read know-it-all remains pristine
 

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