2014 Penn Bowl literature discussion

[Auks Ran Ova]

Hi! I wrote or significantly edited almost all of the lit, other than a few tossups in packets 12-14 that were written by Penn people and edited primarily by Matt Jackson. Please comment on it here.

[UlyssesInvictus]

Can I see the Gao Xingjian tossup?

I remember that I found the lit to be pretty non-offensive across the board, which equates to being really good in my book. Don't remember any curious answerlines that deviated from the standard author/work formula, but if there were any you were particularly proud of, I'd love to see them and discuss them.

[Auks Ran Ova]

Can I see the Gao Xingjian tossup?

In one of this author’s short stories, a couple on vacation to the title edifice encounter a man and his son hunting for grasshoppers. In another of his stories, the narrator encounters a sad girl on crutches after finding no one interested in his tale of nearly drowning. This author of “The Temple” and “The Cramp” wrote a play in which Hothead wants to eat trendy yogurt, while Glasses realizes that “ten years have swept by!”, causing the cast to chant “go” before finally (*) leaving the title location. His most famous novel splits its time between a writer misdiagnosed with lung cancer who travels to Sichuan and a backpacker who encounters a woman known as “she” while searching for Lingshan; those two characters are known only as “I” and “You”. For 10 points, name this Paris-dwelling Chinese author of Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandpa, Bus Stop, and Soul Mountain.
ANSWER: Gao Xingjian [or, I suppose, Kao Hsing-chien]

I remember that I found the lit to be pretty non-offensive across the board, which equates to being really good in my book. Don't remember any curious answerlines that deviated from the standard author/work formula, but if there were any you were particularly proud of, I'd love to see them and discuss them.

Sure, here's some of the more unusual stuff (I can post the questions themselves if you want to see them): the tossups on the Atlantic, "The Man with the Blue Guitar", and The Pillow Book; the bonus parts on Sartre declining the lit Nobel, Mary Tyrone taking morphine, Murakami translators, "sound mind in a sound body", and bowler hats (as a middle part)

[UlyssesInvictus]

Oh man, I loved that Atlantic tossup! Can I see it? I thought it was a history tossup at first, but I can see it as a lit-hist tossup. The Murakami translator bonus was interesting as well; I sometimes wonder why we don't use translator clues more often. Maybe they've become more popular recently?

What's the sound mind question referring to? I don't remember hearing it.

[Auks Ran Ova]

Certainly!

This periodical first published a story in which Dugal McAdoo hires a witch to prevent slaves from eating his scuppernongs. An influential article written for this publication averred that “amid the vast range of human powers and properties, the fact of sex is but one item”. That article, “Ought Women to Learn the Alphabet?”, was written for this publication by Thomas Wentworth Higginson, whose “Letter to a Young Contributor” in this magazine inspired (*) Emily Dickinson to contact him. This magazine published the early stories of Charles Chesnutt, as well as Julia Ward Howe’s “Battle Hymn of the Republic”. Its longtime editors have included William Dean Howells and one of its co-founders, James Russell Lowell. For 10 points, name this literary magazine founded in 1857 in Boston and named for a nearby body of water.
ANSWER: The Atlantic Monthly

The "sound mind in a sound body" part was the third part of a Juvenal bonus:

[10] Juvenal’s tenth satire also coined this phrase, the first entry in a list of things that one should pray to the gods for, where it immediately precedes “a stout heart that has no fear of death”.
ANSWER: “a sound mind in a sound body” [or “mens sana in corpore sano”; or “a healthy mind in a healthy body” or equivalents]