The Open Letters Quiz:
Kicking Off the New Year…
| The holiday season has come and gone in a flurry of last-minute sales and airport delays. Countdowns were called out, ill-advised office party cloakroom groping was indulged in, resolutions were made and broken before the champagne corks hit the floor. Millions of people who’ve just been forcibly reminded that they don’t have Currier & Ives Christmas families must now wait until Valentine’s Day to be forcibly reminded that their most passionate love affair these days is with Netflix. Needless to say, the mood of the Open Letters Quiz has only darkened. Where last month it wallowed in a mire of general rancor and ill-will, this month it has descended to outright name-calling, and it intends to drag you down to its level. Email your profanity-laced answers to quiz@openlettersmonthly.com. |  |
1. In the great American film “Ferris Beuller’s Day Off,” which character utters the immortal line “Pardon my French but you’re an asshole,” and what is the ruse?
2. In Anthony Trollope’s “The Duke’s Children,” idiotic aristocrat Dolly Longstaff refers to the beautiful American Isabel Boncasson as a “pert poppet.” Who does he (yes, he – it’s short for ‘Adolphus’) say this to, and why is it a really bad idea to do so?
3. In the superb mini-series “Masada,” obsequious, treacherous Pomponius Falco (played with inimitable oil by David Warner) tells someone this: “You’re a bore, a boor, an ignoramus, and an overrated officer.” Who (character or actor will be sufficient) is on the receiving end of this snittery?
4. It’s an odd thing: for a poem as savage as the Iliad, it’s got comparatively little spittle and invective in it. One famous exception happens in Book One, here presented in the greatest English translation of them all. Name the speaker and the spoken-to – and of course name the translator.
… thou ever steep’t in wine,
Dog’s face, with heart but of a hart, that nor in th’ open eye
Of fight dar’st thrust into a prease, nor with our noblest lie
In secret ambush.
5. James Goldman’s hilariously dysfunctional play “The Lion in Winter” fairly bristles with finely-wrought name-calling. One can scarcely follow the abuse without a scorecard. See if you can keep up:
Who’s referred to as “that epic idiot, that monument to mock”?
Who’s called “a device, he’s wheels and gears”?
Who’s being mocked here: “You’re a dull boy, dull as plainsong, la la la forever on one note. I gave the Church up out of boredom, I can do as much for you.”
Which single character is variously referred to as all of the following: ‘Medusa,’ ‘dragon,’ ‘gorgon,’ ‘Medea to the teeth,’ ‘bag of bile,’ ‘tragedy,’ and ‘great bitch’?
Who’s called a “walking pustule”?
Who’s referred to as an “unnatural animal”?
6. In Shakespeare’s Henry VIII, who’s called, among other things, a “butcher’s cur”?
7. In Emlyn Williams’ heartfelt play “The Corn is Green,” the ordinarily even-tempered L.C. Moffat is moved to call which character an “addlepated nincompoop”?
8. The great American film critic Pauline Kael had this withering little assessment to make of which actor: “Physically he’s large, but his personality is small, pink, and shiny” (hint: he’d very likely have been stirred, not shaken, by the verdict)?
9. In the winsome twilight-Western “Rooster Cogburn,” prim and prissy schoolmarm Miss Goodnight is berating who – oops, whom – with this little tirade: “You’re in a sorry state. You’re unsteady on your feet, untidy in your person, rank with the smell of sweat and spirits”?
10. Which writer did book critic Dale Peck famously – or infamously – refer to as “the worst writer of his generation”?
In December we bid bitter holiday tidings with a nasty, sneering Scrooge-themed quiz, and we were duly repaid with an inbox choked with wrong answers like a stocking filled with coal. The last dying ember of the seasonal spirit compels us to report, however, that there was a winner: Jan Berman, of Santa Cruz, California, who answered eight questions correctly and will receive handsome copies of Tacitus’ “Histories” and “Annals,” which contain unflattering descriptions of Jews and Christians alike. Jan, for you, and only for a moment, we twist our scowl into smile. Here are the answers:
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).
- “Another Bullshit Night in Suck City”; “The End of the Affair”; “Farewell, My Lovely”; “Diary of a Nobody”; “Journal of a Plague Year”
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?
-Achilles
The harried Sir Toby Belch in “Twelfth Night” feels justified to call somebody a “niggardly rascally sheep-biter.” Who might that worthy be?
-Malvolio
In “Richard III,” Lord Grey makes heated reference to “a knot you are of damned bloodsuckers” – who’s taking such crap from him?
-His executioners
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!”
-Just kidding! That’s from Marlowe’s “Tamburlaine the Great.” Fooled you on that one, huh?
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?
-Himself
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.”
-William Wordworth
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.”
-Andrew Marvell
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!”
-Ahab, from “Moby-Dick”
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.”
-Lord Marchmain’s mistress, Cara, from “Brideshead Revisited”
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.”
-Dot Parker
Print This Article
