Lit finals

Overbooked ‘16
Lit Quiz Finals

Set by
Vishal Katariya
Shubhajit Das
Gerleo Nimalan

Held at IIT Madras on April 3, 2016 as
part of Saahitya, litfest.
Winners:
1st Sukruth + Vikram - IITM
2nd Bhargavi + Kavin + Shashwat - IITM
3rd Abid + Santhosh - SRM, SSN

This is how we do.
3*8 b/pounce sets
4 written rounds

i like big books and i cannot lie
<vishal speshulz 1>
6 Questions on big books (duh)
6*+5/0

1. 832
The author’s second book, it is the longest to win the Man Booker Prize. It is
described by its author as ‘a kind of weird sci-fi fantasy thing’.

2. 982
*A Goodreads review*
“I had my doubts about the basic premise of this book. A crazy old guy with a
Buzz Lightyear-like delusion travels across Spain [...]? How did the author
manage to fill a thousand or so pages with that? Would the joke not have
worn thin to the point of implosion by the end of the book? ”

3. 729
X, a 1976 Pulitzer Prize winner was referenced by Jon Stewart in a section on
Baltimore,
“Or, we could agree to keep ignoring the X of how systemically, historically
disenfranchised many African-American communities still are, only paying
attention to them when we fear their periodic fiery ball of anger threatens to enter
our airspace, like some kind of ____ _____’s comet.”

4. 1168
Fourth and last of the author’s works, the title is taken from a conversation
between the characters Francisco d'Anconia and Hank Rearden, in which
d'Anconia asks Rearden what advice he would give X upon seeing that "the
greater [X's] effort, the heavier the _____ bore down on ...". With Rearden
unable to answer, d'Anconia gives his own response: "To Y".

5. 1368
Published in 1993, the book is set in post-independence, post-partition India.
At its core, it is a love story, the book takes the reader into the richly imagined
world of four large extended families and spins a compulsively readable tale
of their lives and loves.

6. 1440
The creator of this work says about it that it was “not a novel, even less is it a
poem, and still less a historical chronicle”. Large sections are philosophical
discussions rather than narrative. According to the Encyclopedia Brittanica,
"no single English novel attains the universality of" this work. It is also a now-
running BBC series.

1.832
The author’s second book, it is the longest to win the Man Booker Prize. It is
described by its author as ‘a kind of weird sci-fi fantasy thing’.

1
“Everything has gone for me but the certainty of your goodness. I can’t go on
spoiling your life any longer. I don’t think two people could have been happier
than we have been.”
Above is an example of an X.
It isn’t fair to judge Xs at the same level as other literary works, because they
aren’t even considered literature at all. However, Xs are so varied and deep
that they might just form their own literary genre. Xs are also, necessarily,
historical records, and their contents can serve as subtext to historical
nightmares, or annotations on the existential texts of history itself: a kind of
human marginalia.

2
The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion is an 1839 science fiction short story by Edgar Allan
Poe.
Astronomers calculate that a comet is approaching the Earth. When it is almost upon Earth,
people experience exhilaration, as the comet has no harmful effects. But this is followed by
pain and delirium. This effect is discovered to be caused by the loss of nitrogen from the
atmosphere, leaving pure oxygen, which finally bursts into flame when the comet nucleus
hits. This is all being talked about in the titular conversation.
a) Which genre of fiction was the story one of the first examples of?
b) The protagonists are named after the attendants of X. X, along with Y, is the titular
character of a play first performed in 1607, whose plot was based on the translation of
Plutarch’s Lives. Name the play.

Post-apocalyptic fiction
Antony and Cleopatra

3
In his preface the author states: “The cinema is now one of the main objects on which
efforts should be concentrated in order to conduct the revolution in art and literature.
The cinema occupies an important place in the overall development of art and
literature. As such it is a powerful ideological weapon for the revolution and
construction. Therefore, concentrating efforts on the cinema, making breakthroughs
and following up success in all areas of art and literature is the basic principle that we
must adhere to in revolutionizing art and literature.”
The author of this work devoted himself to ideological and propaganda work of the
Central Committee of the Party. He personally guided the production of films such as
Sea of Blood, The Fate of a Self-Defense Corps Man and The Flower Girl. He worked against
the de-Stalinizing liberal influence in his country. Who is this author?

4
Iyobinte Pusthakam (Book of Job) is a 2014 Indian Malayalam-language action drama
film. It is a period drama set in the mid-20th century in Munnar, Western Ghats. It
follows the life of Iyob and the sibling rivalry between his sons Aloshy, Ivan and Dimitri
who are named after the characters from X, an 1880 work that was the author’s last.
The Book of Job is a chapter of the Hebrew Bible, and the first poetic book in the
Christian Old Testament that addresses the theme of God's justice in the face of human
suffering – or more simply, "Why do the righteous suffer?" It has inspired/influenced
many works including X and a 1925 novel Y, which starts with Someone must have been
telling tales about Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything wrong, he was
________, in a characteristic style of the author’s abrupt beginnings.
X und Y.

The Brothers Karamazov
The Trial by Kafka

5
We shall watch an unofficial trailer for an upcoming TV series that has got fans
all over talking.
With chapters such as The Yeast of Beasts, Morel Behavior in a Free Society,
Fungible Mold, Moldable Fungi, Visitable Fungal Ditches, the book shown in it
has an alliterative two word name. Name this book, the second word of which
might remind a lot of people here of a simultaneous happening in insti, means
small trivial details.
The chapter Visitable Fungal Ditches is said to contain crucial information that
the protagonists need to know about, according to the narrator. In what way
is the title of the chapter reflective of the fact that it is a vital plot point?

Mushroom Minutiae
Visitable Fungal Ditches abbreviates to VFD (Volunteer Fire Department),
which is an organisation that plays a key role in the Lemony Snicket universe.

6
Lucien Carr (1925 – 2005) was a key member of the original New York City circle of the
Beat Generation in the 1940s. Carr had a taste for provocative behavior, for bawdy
songs and for coarse antics aimed at shocking those with staid middle-class values.
Ginsberg wrote in his journal at the time: “Know these words, and you speak the Carr
language: fruit, X, Y, cacoethes, feces, foetus, womb, Z.”
X and Y are kindof related, derived from Greek for to inflate or swell and Greek for to
shut, latch or hook respectively. Z is a French poet born in 1854. Considered a prodigy by
most, he wrote all his poetry in a span of five years. He is also considered a major
influence on the counter-culture Beat movement, inspiring Bob Dylan, Patti Smith and
more. Image on next slide.
Give X (2.5) Y (2.5) Z (5).

7
Ursula K Le Guin is an American author of novels, children's books, and short
stories, mainly in the genres of fantasy and science fiction. First published in
the 1960s, her work has often depicted futuristic or imaginary alternative
worlds in politics, the natural environment, gender, ethnography, religion,
sexuality.
Given in the next slide are a few of her books’ covers. To what does Le Guin
attribute the frequent lack of illustrations of people/lead characters on her
covers?
#storytelling

The majority of her main characters are people of color, a choice made to
reflect the non-white majority of humans.
“If you look at my books, you’ll find that most of my central characters aren’t
white. You don’t see it on the cover, because they refuse to put people of color
on book jackets. But I’ve always done that deliberately because most people in
the world aren’t white. Why in the future would we assume they are?”

8
Prof. Agata Szczeszak-Brewer in her blog Literary and
Cultural Theory compares The Big Lebowski to X by Y
by seeing it as ‘an illustration of the philosophy of
Absurdism, which one might consider type of nihilism
- a reference which is frequently alluded to within the
film itself.’
‘The act of _______ in the movie is an adapted symbol
which I will take to be representative of X. This
ceaseless labor is a metaphor for the absurd
repetition and meaninglessness of everyday life.‘
Give X and Y for 3 each and blank for 4.

Bowling
Myth of Sisyphus / Sisyphus /
Sisyphus’ stone
Albert Camus

<vishal speshulz 2>
what vishal calls #detectivestylz
alphabet soup A-E
5* +3/-0

Surprising given his penchant for producing tough and lofty poems, TS Eliot was a
fan of detective literature. He proclaimed that an 1853 work, A, was the “the first,
the longest and the best of modern English detective novels.” Eliot also coined
many rules for good detective books, one being that “elaborate and bizarre
machinery is an irrelevance”. This rule seems to exclude masterpieces such as
Arthur Conan Doyle’s B, where the title confuses one to believe that gypsies are the
cause for murder. Eliot himself believed that all great detective works seem to
somehow break one of his rules or another. He claimed that he greatly admired
ACD, and confessed later in a letter that the line “on the edge of a grimpen” from
his C alludes to the “Grimpen Mire” from D. Eliot’s rules were idiosyncratic, and one
wonders what he might have thought of the work E, with its cosmopolite eccentrics
chasing after a shadowy MacGuffin with a history going back to the Knights
Templar.

A The Moonstone
B The Speckled Band
C Four Quartets
D The Hound of the Baskervilles
E The Maltese Falcon

9
Rayuela is an antinovel often cited as a landmark work of
experimental fiction by Argentine writer Julio Cortázar
published in English in 1966. It is written in an episodic,
snapshot manner. The book has 155 chapters, the last 99
designated as "expendable." Some of these "expendable"
chapters fill in gaps that occur in the main storyline. The
book can be read in three ways: either progressively from
chapters 1 to 56 or by passing through the entire set of
155 chapters according to a "Table of Instructions"
designated by the author.
a) What does Rayuela translate to.
b) What is the third way of reading the book.

Hopscotch
In no particular order.
Cortázar leaves the reader the option of choosing a unique path through the
narrative.

10) X, Y, Z - 3+3+4.
Name the following items taken from Wikipedia’s List of feminist comic books.
a) X - Autobiographical graphic novel about a woman growing up in 1980-1995 Iran.
b) Y: The High Cost of Living by Neil Gaiman, Chris Bachalo, and Mark Buckingham -
Vertigo Comics miniseries about a Y taking a temporary human form.
c) Z - A Jet City Comics trilogy about the adventures of a secret society of martial arts-
trained women, known as the "Amazons", who serve as bodyguards and field
agents for the leaders of the radical women's ________ movement in England during
early 1914.
Z is a portmanteau of ________ and a form of martial arts.

Persepolis, Death and Suffrajitsu

11
Literary critic Harold Bloom claims that the four major American novelists of
our time are Don DeLillo, Philip Roth, X, and Y.
X and Y have been on the probables list for the Nobel Prize in Literature for a
while now. One advantage that X has is that his work isn’t completely America-
centric, and his stories are often at the America-Mexico border. X has another
advantage over Y in that he has become less of a recluse and has even given
an interview to Oprah. If Y were to be awarded the Nobel, he’d probably not
travel to Sweden.
Y is a MacArthur fellow and a recluse. There are hardly any pictures of his to
be found. His latest book came out in 2013, Bleeding Edge.

X - Cormac McCarthy
Y - Thomas Pynchon

12.
X takes her first name after the woman in the painting shown, most famous
for a story involving a man who looked at her when she was taking a shower
(and then lust blah). X is the lead female in an 1874 work that takes its title
from a Thomas Gray poem titled Elegy Written in a Country Courtyard.
X lent her surname to Y, a character from a series published in 2008-2010. Y
takes his/her first name from the common name of a plant called Sagittaria.
Give X.

Woman applying
soap viewed from
perspective of the
man as he shadily
watches her

Bathsheba Everdeen
Katniss Everdeen was named for her

13.
X is a USA nonprofit organisation who say that they believe that writing makes
the world a more creative, vibrant place. Their flagship event is also called X,
and they have come up with a new initiative Camp X, which happens in April
and July, unlike their flagship event X. They welcome word-counts between 30
and 10,000, and invite writers to tackle any project they like.
X?

14.
Uncle D. is a character in Garry Trudeau’s Doonesbury who is an epic
consumer of drugs and alcohol, an amoral trickster with a penchant for
firearms. He was originally supposed to be a straight caricature of another
famous literary character X but took a life of his own. In homage to X’s creator
Y, Rolling Stone magazine has X listed as the editor of their fictional sports
department.
X? Y?

14.
X - Raoul Duke, Y - Hunter S Thompson

15.
The next slide has a screenshot of an article on the Penguin Blog. Blanked out
is the 4-word title of a 2011 non-fiction book authored by a non-Literature
Nobel laureate.

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahnemann

16.
X had a sad and disturbed childhood, which reflects in his works. He seems to
be obsessed with death, and his books often feature beasts who might eat
you, often lions. X said he dreamed of these ____ ______ as an adult, at a shiva
after someone had died. X and his sister were sitting around a fire with their
relatives from Europe, who didn’t speak English and supposedly had yellow
teeth. They grabbed the children’s cheeks. It was like they would gobble up X
and his siblings, along with everything else in the house. The ____ ______ were
Jewish relatives.
Give X and fill in the blanks. (5*2)

16.
Maurice Sendak, with the work being Where the Wild Things Are

pairs
<vishal speshulz 2>
authors sharing first name
5x +10

1.
A
X, CBE FRSL was born in 1892. He served as
the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of
Anglo-Saxon and Fellow of Pembroke College,
Oxford, from 1925 to 1945 and Merton
Professor of English Language and Literature
and Fellow of Merton College, Oxford from
1945 to 1959.
B
X Ray Jr. is an American bestselling writer,
attorney, politician and activist. He is best
known for his _____ thrillers. He is a winner of
the Galaxy British Book Awards, and is one of
only three authors to sell 2 million copies on a
first printing.

2.
A
X, CBE FRAS in 1956 discovered the
underwater ruins of the ancient Koneswaram
Temple in a place called Tricomalee. X’s fame
was further augmented in the 1980s, from
being the host of several television shows
such as X’s Mysterious World. X was knighted
in 1998, and was also awarded another
country’s highest honor in 2005.
B
He would spend one year researching a
subject, followed by six months reviewing his
notes and, finally, about 18 months writing
the book. Aggressive research - tracking rebel
guerrillas in the Peruvian jungle (at age 67) for
The Evening News (1990), or reading more than
two dozen books on the _____ industry for
_____ - gave his novels a realism that appealed
to many kinds of readers. Some critics
complained that such thoroughness of
background disguised a lack of literary talent.

3.
A
X is an American German-born poet, short-
story writer and novelist. The FBI kept a file
on him as a result of his column, Notes of a
Dirty Old Man, in the LA underground
newspaper Open City. TIME called him “a
laureate of American lowlife”.
B
Another stalwart in the field says about him :
The clean, minimalist ________, the sarcastic
humor, the unflinching emotional honesty,
the inner thoughts of a household pet, the
serious treatment of children, the wild
fantasies, the merchandising on an enormous
scale—in countless ways, X blazed the wide
trail that most every __________ since has tried
to follow."

4.
A
X lost his job in the Great Depression and
decided, in 1944, to become a _________ fiction
writer. Very influential, he is considered one
of the founders of the ‘hard-boiled’ school of
_________ fiction. His first story Blackmailers
Don’t Shoot was published in 1933 in Black
Mask, a pulp magazine.
B
This author came into the limelight due to
one of his works being showcased in a movie
directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu.

5.
A
He didn’t make the first of these, but he
definitely did make the first that was any
good at all. Also, his is the one of the most
famous biographies in English literature,
written by James Boswell in 1791.
B
An Irish avant-garde poet, playwright and
novelist, X was one of the most influential
writers of the 20th century. He won the Nobel
Prize for literature in 1969.

*scrap*
A
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is the
first novel of X. Written from the point of view
of Stephen Daedalus, it is a semi-
autobiographical novel. One of his books
inspired a scientific naming convention first
proposed by Murray Gell-Mann.
B *
X is a 19th century American writer. He was
nominated for the Nobel Prize in 1911, 1912
and 1916. Fill in stuff later

A Arthur C Clarke
B Arthur Hailey

A Charles Bukowski
B Charles Schulz

A Raymond Chandler
B Raymond Carver

A Samuel ‘Dr.’ Johnson
B Samuel Beckett

17.
In Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, Holmes then reveals that, while being tortured by Moriarty
when he puts a hook in him and pushes him around to Schubert’s Trout playing and tells him a story
on the piece, he replaced the doctor's personal diary that contained all his plans and financing with a
duplicate.
The diary that Holmes replaces Moriarty’s actual one with (the one with the bling) is a flip book type
which shows, when flipped fast, a man doing a leisure time activity and what happens next. The
video ends with a six word phrase, which is a single letter modification on a 2014 work which is the
fourth in a series. It follows the Barrington-Clifton family during the years 1957 to 1964, when Emma
Barrington Clifton seeks to take control of her family shipping business and must deal with
conspiracies and sabotage, opening with Harry Clifton and his wife Emma rushing to hospital to
learn the fate of their son Sebastian, who has been involved in a fatal car accident.
What six word phrase.

Be Careful What
You Fish For
A play on Be
Careful What You
Wish For by
Jeffrey Archer

18
What is the name of Louisa May Alcott’s third novel about the March sisters,
which consists of two words starting with consecutive letters of the alphabet?

19
It’s been twenty years since this trilogy came out. One of the central themes in
the three books are Xs. The fantasy of the X is a fantasy of self-knowledge, of
completely understanding your secret, innermost self and your soul.
The Catholic Herald called it "truly the stuff of nightmares." The New York
Times said the trilogy "may well hold the most subversive message in
children's literature in years." At the premiere of the film adaptation of the
first novel in the trilogy, the Catholic League passed out pamphlets urging
Americans to boycott a franchise that "denigrates faith."
Which trilogy is this, who is the author, and X?

His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
X - daemons

20
X is a 19th century philosopher. Y is a 1971 born
French economist. They both published books with
titles that differ by a letter in 1867 and 2013
respectively.
The second title is defined as wealth in the form of
money or other assets owned by a person or
organization or available for a purpose such as
starting a company or investing. Shown is the
second author.
Name the second author and one of the books.

21
In Wikipedia’s list of stock characters, spoilt child is
defined as A child who exhibits behavioral
problems from overindulgence by his or her
parents. Id the three spoilt children.
a) Belongs to a group of four with Augustus
Gloop and Violet Beauregarde in a 1964 book
b)Son/daughter of the person shown, Hiram
c) Studies at his/her father’s old school,
Smeltings

Veruca Salt
Veronica Lodge
Dudley Dursley

22.
*from the internet*
Space, witches, prophesies, lasers, gigantic worms, hallucinogenics, Messiahs,
___ _______, Kyle MacLachlan—what could possibly go wrong? If you’re _____
_______, absolutely nothing. If you’re David Lynch, Universal Studios, or one of
the millions of confused and horrified moviegoers in December 1984? A
metric f*** ton.
What book is being spoken of here, that was made into a grossly
underwhelming movie in 1984?

23
An illustration of
which character
as a grass-
smoking pedant
(4) for which 1865
book (3) by whom
(4).
More illustrations
that the person
made for the
book are given.

The Caterpillar
Ralph Steadman
Adventures of Alice in Wonderland

24
“L-, the light of my fire, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. L-: the tip of the
tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the
teeth.”
As Times Literary Supplement quickly pointed out, neither English or Russian
involved what the passage quoted described; it is alveolar in nature.
What is L. What is the author/are we talking about.

Written round 1
Rushdie
5 questions.
+5/-0 without stake.
+10/-5 with stake.

Grimus begins with Flapping Eagle, narrator, arriving at the beach where a
character called VBC Jones lives by. He is named after three authors who blah.
What do V, B and C stand for.
1) V - (70 BC -19 BC) Poet who acts as a guide in 2 out of 3 parts of a 1321
publication.
2) B - (1908 - 1986) Most famous for a 1949 work which helped establish an
ideology/field of study. Was in an open relationship with a philosopher who
rejected Nobel Lit in ‘64.
3) C - (350-275 BC) Pioneer of the field of political science and economics in
India. Work is thought of as an important precursor to classical economics.

4)
In the town of K to which Flapping Eagle and VBC Jones travel to is a ho-house
called House of the Rising Son, which is owned by a Madame _______. It is
unclear as to which of the two names Rushdie decided on first, but he clearly
intended to pun on an Athenian tragedy that was first performed around 429
BC.
The tragedy revolves around the life of a king of Thebes, who unwittingly fulfils
a prophecy of the Oracle at Delphi, one that involved a murder and a wedding.
Who owns the House of the Rising Son.

5)
The ho’s who work at the House of the Rising Son are named delightfully. The
Indian, Kamala, who specialises in the sensual, is surnamed in a way that
references an ancient text that is thought to have been written around 200 CE
- 400 CE. The surname literally means a thread or line that holds things
together, and more metaphorically refers to an aphorism (or line, rule,
formula), or a collection of such aphorisms in the form of a manual.
What.

Grimus begins with Flapping Eagle, narrator, arriving at the beach where a
character called VBC Jones lives by. He is named after three authors. What do
V, B and C stand for.
1) V - (70 BC -19 BC) Poet who acts as a guide in 2 out of 3 parts of a 1321
publication.
2) B - (1908 - 1986) Most famous for a 1949 work which helped establish an
ideology/field of study. Was in an open relationship with a philosopher who
rejected Nobel Lit in ‘64.
3) C - (350-275 BC) Pioneer of the field of political science and economics in
India. Work is thought of as an important precursor to classical economics.

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