A Lethal Dose of Trivia

New this month from the University of Nebraska Press, Violent Affect: Literature, Cinema, and Critique after Representation by Marco Abel presents a radical new theory on the affect of violence in literature and cinema: that violence is all-pervasive by ontological necessity. To prove this theory, Abel analyzes literary and cinematic works such as those by Don DeLillo, Bret Easton Ellis, Mary Harron, Patricia Highsmith, the Coen Brothers, and Robert DeNiro. As a nod to Abel’s chilling work, today’s “Tuesday Trivia” focuses on violence and literature. Careful—these questions are murderously difficult.

Match the quote on violence to the literary work in which it originated.

1. "My heart was fashioned to be susceptible of love and sympathy, and when wrenched by misery to vice and hatred, it did not endure the violence of the change without torture such as you cannot even imagine."

2. "[T]reachery and violence are spears pointed at both ends; they wound those who resort to them worse than their enemies."

3. “To all the world he was the man of violence, half animal and half demon; but to her he always remained the little wilful boy of her own girlhood, the child who had clung to her hand. Evil indeed is the man who has not one woman to mourn him."

4. "I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone. The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes, and probably lead to acts of violence in Grosvenor Square."

5. "It is not violence that best overcomes hate—nor vengeance that most certainly heals injury."

6. "To care only for well-being seems to me positively ill-bred. Whether it’s good or bad, it is sometimes very pleasant, too, to smash things."

7. "’I am one by myself, one,’ said Mortimer, ‘high up an awful staircase commanding a burial-ground, and I have a whole clerk to myself, and he has nothing to do but look at the burial-ground, and what he will turn out when arrived at maturity, I cannot conceive. Whether, in that shabby rook’s nest, he is always plotting wisdom, or plotting murder; whether he will grow up, after so much solitary brooding, to enlighten his fellow-creatures, or to poison them; is the only speck of interest that presents itself to my professional view.’"

8. "A bloody deed! almost as bad, good mother,
As kill a king, and marry with his brother."

9. "Every murderer is probably somebody’s old friend," observed Poirot philosophically. "You cannot mix up sentiment and reason."

10. "[F]rom hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee."

A. Hamlet by William Shakespeare
B. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
C. Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky
D. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
E. Moby Dick by Herman Melville
F. The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
G. The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie
H. Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
I. The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
J. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

Answers: 1-D; 2-J; 3-I; 4-F; 5-B; 6-C; 7-H; 8-A; 9-G; 10-E

How did you do?
0-2: Bloody awful!
3-5: Bloody mediocre.
6-8: Bloody good.
9-10: Bloody terrific!