The Open Letters Quiz:
Bah Humbug!
| And so it comes upon us once again, the annual horror-dream in which those of us who hoard and sleep and feed with derision and controversy gnawing at our souls find ourselves subjected to that most oppressive of all oppressive minorities: cheerful people. They batten onto the Holidays with gleeful rigor, teeth bared in rictus grins, hoisting their steins of non-alcoholic eggnog, until it seems our only escape is suicide’s sweet abandon. In a futile gesture to stem this tide of twittering tinsel-twined tweeness, our December Open Letters Quiz is hereby devoted to all things nasty, hopeless, and just generally bah-humbuggy. Email your answers to quiz@openlettersmonthly.com. |  |
1. Creative types, bless their black, bean-sized hearts, are fascinated by – and frequently given to – all sorts of non-cheery business, as anybody can see even by glimpsing at the titles of their works. Name five such misery-derived titles (leaving out Stephen King’s “Misery,” obviously).
2. Considering the fact that their author was a secret Catholic, a repressed homosexual, and the Earl of Oxford, it’s no big surprise how nasty and mouthy the works of Shakespeare are. His characters are forever hurling abuse at each other, and the sheer relish of the language involved is the best hint that Shakespeare himself was no stranger to letting people have it right between the eyes. Let’s take a little tour, shall we?
In “Troilus and Cressida,” the mighty Ajax, deaf to irony, calls somebody “a paltry, insolent fellow” – who’s he talking about?
The harried Sir Toby Belch in “Twelfth Night” feels justified to call somebody a “niggardly rascally sheep-biter.” Who might that worthy be?
In “Richard III,” Lord Grey makes heated reference to “a knot you are of damned bloodsuckers” – who’s taking such crap from him?
In “Macbeth,” the outraged ruler blurts this out to whom:
“Villains, cowards, traitors to our state!
Fall to the earth and pierce the pit of hell,
That legions of tormenting spirits may vex
Your slavish bosoms with continual pains!”
And finally, in “Cymbeline,” Posthumus Leonatus goes on this little tirade:
“…most credulous fool,
Egregious murderer, thief, anything
That’s due to all the villains past, in being,
To come!”
Who’s the object of his contempt?
3. And it’s not just Shakespeare! Lots of writers, poets especially, partake deeply of every non-Holiday emotion on the map. Which happy soul uncorked this, for instance:
“The fear that kills,
And hope that is unwilling to be fed;
Cold, pain, and labour, and all fleshly ills;
And mighty Poets in their misery dead.”
Or what about this little poesie:
“My love is of a birth as rare
As ‘tis for object strange and high:
It was begotten by despair
Upon impossibility.”
4. But lest the reader think such gloom and spittle is confined only to realms of verse, try these two prose passages on for size, and when you’re done, identify each source
“…to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s
sake, I spit my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins and all hearses to one
common pool!”
Or this:
“He hates her; but you can have no conception of how he hates her. You
would think him so calm and English – the milord, rather blasé, all
passion dead, wishing to be comfortable and not to worry, following
the sun, with me to look after the one thing no man can do for himself.
My friend, he is a volcano of hate. He cannot breathe the same air as
She. He will not set foot in England because it is her home.”
5. But dash it all, even in the midst of our dyspeptic anti-Holiday ranting, we can’t help but want to end the quiz on an at least marginally happy note (‘tis the season, after all, dammit). Not too happy, though – just a small glimmer, a begrudged treble-call of muted optimism, to get us through to the new year. Here it is, and we ask only that you provide the somewhat incongruous author:
“Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns are unlawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.”
November’s quiz was morbidly preoccupied with all things grim and gloomy, and the sorry lot of wrong answers we received did little to improve our mood – but the month was saved when, on a disturbingly warm day just before Thanksgiving, we found an email from Jane Ingersoll, out of Pasadena, California, which contained a cheering 21 correct answers. Thanks to Jane, we decided to tip the guy who delivered our Thanksgiving pizza, and in gratitude we’re sending her a copy of Norman Mailer’s “The Prisoner of Sex” – a picker-upper for everyone involved! Here are the answers:
1. As noted above, light vanishes in November. From the Stygian depths, list five books whose titles make reference to fading light.
—“Night,” “Let Darkness Fall,” “Gathering Twilight,” “Darkness Visible,” “Before Night Falls”
2. As light fades so does heat, and again we’re talking titles. Name ten works of art with cold in the title.
—“In Cold Blood,” “Love in a Cold Climate,” “Cold Mountain,” “The Spy Who Came in From the Cold,” “Cold Comfort Farm, “Cold Sassy Tree,” “The Cold Six Thousand,” “Cold Snap,” “The Cat Who Came in from the Cold,” “Cold Fear” (it’s a Dean Koontz book, so shaddup)
3. Fading light and fading heat can make a body depressed. And certainly literature would be nowhere without depression. Offer five works of art in which one of the main character is simply depressed. Not because he’s losing his kingdom, not because he’s lost his country, just because he’s in a bad mood.
—Antonio (of “The Merchant of Venice”), Jaques (of “As You Like It”), Donnie Darko, Travis Bickle, Holden Caulfield
4. In addition to being inhospitably cold and sunless, November is the grayest month of all. And, as has been intimated, artists love gray as a color. Demonstrate accordingly! Name five works of art that invoke the color gray!
—“Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” “In Gray Midwinter,” “Gray Victory” and “Gray Battalion (both are Civil War books), “Hazy Shade of Winter”
5. In his little classic “Agricola,” the great Roman historian Tacitus tell us that the Empire’s northern tribes equated winter with the ascent of wolves. Gloomy bunch that they are, writers have made free access to this imagery. Name ten works of art with wolf in the title (note to punters: extensive reference to the various execrations of Hollywood will be viewed here as what our British readers would call ‘decidedly bad form, that’).
—“Of Wolves and Men,” “Wolf Whistle,” Hour of the Wolf,” “The Sea-Wolf,” “Wolves Eat Dogs,” “Peter and the Wolf,” “Wolf Willow,” “Wolf Solent,” “Dances With Wolves,” “Never Cry Wolf”
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