1. An attempt to give up smoking is the focus of which modernist classic?

   1. Molloy by Samuel Beckett

   2. The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil

   3. Confessions of Zeno by Italo Svevo

   4. The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa

2. 

   What was Oscar Wilde’s verdict on cigarettes?

   1. “No matter what Aristotle and the Philosophers say, nothing is equal to tobacco; it's the passion of the well-bred, and he who lives without tobacco lives a life not worth living.”

   2. “A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?”

   3. “Smoking I find the most ridiculous of all the varieties of human behaviour and practically the only one that is entirely against nature.”

   4. “Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I've done it thousands of times.”

3. What was George Orwell’s 1946 essay Books vs Cigarettes about?

   1. Whether it’s possible to write without smoking

   2. Which of the two he spends more money on

   3. An allegory in which books are the ruling class and cigarettes the proletariat

   4. Which is better for you

4. Smoking was a signifier of rebellion for the bloomers-wearing, bicycling New Woman who struggled against Victorian mores. In which "New Woman book" does Sue Bridehead appear?

   1. Odd Women by George Gissing

   2. Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy

   3. The Woman who Did by Grant Allen

   4. Ideala by Sarah Grand

5. 

   Simon Gray’s Smoking Diaries are structured around his attempts to renounce tobacco. Which one of these is NOT the title of a volume?

   1. The Common Pursuit

   2. The Year of the Jouncer

   3. Coda

   4. The Last Cigarette

6. Which writer became noted for her taste for cigars?

   1. Edith Wharton

   2. Zelda Fitzgerald

   3. Jane Austen

   4. Gertrude Stein

7. Which creature in a children’s book smokes a hookah?

   1. Toad in Wind in the Willows

   2. The Psammead in Five Children and It

   3. The Caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland

   4. General Woundwort in Watership Down

8. Which poet was responsible for these touching lines on his “dear” friendship with smoking? “Some sing about love in their season of roses, But love has in sorrow no blossoms to wear; So I'll sing tobacco, that cheers and composes, And lulls us asleep in our trouble and care...”

   1. Samuel Coleridge

   2. John Clare

   3. Lord Byron

   4. William Blake

9. 

   Which Russian novel features a scene in which a character has his cigar thrown out of a train window?

   1. Oblomov by Goncharov

   2. Anna Karenina by Tolstoy

   3. Fathers and Sons by Turgenev

   4. The Idiot by Dostoyevsky

10. Which author and celebrated smoker said of his attempt to give up the habit that he had made some progress by giving up smoking in the shower?

    1. Elmore Leonard

    2. Martin Amis

    3. Christopher Hitchens

    4. Raymond Chandler

11. "'Yeah,' I said, and started smoking another cigarette. Unless I specifically inform you otherwise, I'm always smoking another cigarette." Who is saving the reader from too many references to smoking, and in which novel?

    1. John Self in Money by Martin Amis

    2. Mark Renton in Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh

    3. Rob Fleming in High Fidelity by Nick Hornby

    4. Anna Bouverie in The Rector’s Wife by Joanna Trollope

12. “Gossip is a sort of smoke that comes from the dirty tobacco-pipes of those who diffuse it: it proves nothing but the bad taste of the smoker." Which Victorian great disapproved of both tittle tattle and fags?

    1. Thomas Hardy

    2. George Eliot

    3. Charles Dickens

    4. Benjamin Disraeli

Solutions

1:C, 2:B, 3:B, 4:B, 5:A, 6:D, 7:C, 8:B, 9:D, 10:C, 11:A, 12:B

Scores

1. 2 and above.

   You really haven't ever inhaled any smoking stories, have you?

2. 4 and above.

   Your attempt has gone up in smoke

3. 6 and above.

   Hardly likely to set the room on fire

4. 8 and above.

   Light up another in celebration

5. 10 and above.

   It's bad for you, you know, but your answers are looking very cool