Critical Analysis & Reasoning Skills Practice Questions: 14 | Critical Analysis & Reasoning Skills for MCAT PDF Download

The best-known poet in the history of Australian literature is a man who never existed. According to the story, Ernest Lalor Malley was born in 1918 and emigrated to Australia as a child. He worked as an insurance salesman and wrote poetry as a sideline and hobby, a fact discovered only after his death from Graves’ disease at age 25. At that time, his sister Ethel, while going through Malley’s meager possessions, discovered a sheaf of poems.

She sent the poems to a young editor named Max Harris, who ran a modernist magazine called Angry Penguins.The magazine had come under fire from many artistic conservatives, who considered the new modernist poetry humorless and nonsensical.

Among these conservatives were the young poets Harold Stewart and James McAuley. Harris adored Ern Malley’s poems, which numbered 17 in all, and promptly produced a special edition of Angry Penguins that would contain them all. Immediately, controversy arose. Although many of Harris’s colleagues found the poems fascinating, others began to question and even to ridicule the poems, claiming that they represented a hoax perpetrated on the literary scene by Max Harris.

The controversy found its way into the local newspapers, which made it their business to track down Ern Malley and put an end to the story one way or the other. It took only a few weeks for the Sydney Sun to determine that poets Harold Stewart and James McAuley had composed all 17 poems in a single afternoon, paraphrasing chunks of text from a dictionary of quotations, the works of Shakespeare, and whatever came into their minds. They had then invented the backstory for the hapless Ern Malley and submitted the whole to their least favorite editor, Max Harris.

The point, of course, was to prove that modernist poetry was indiscriminate and meaningless, and to some degree, that point prevailed. Angry Penguins closed up shop, and the modernist movement in Australia was completely derailed. Max Harris was actually tried and convicted for publishing obscene poetry. Perversely, he continued throughout his life to insist that hoax or not, Stewart and McAuley had managed to write real poetry, poetry that had meaning and substance. Surprisingly, others agreed.

Although some critics who had leaped onto the Malley bandwagon when the poems first appeared now backpedaled furiously, others insisted that the poems had literary merit. The poems continued to have a life of their own, and even today they are frequently reissued and anthologized. American poet John Ashbery and other members of the New York School of poetry, who championed a kind of surrealist, transcendental verse, became major devotees of the mythical Malley. According to Michael Heyward in The Ern Malley Affair, Ashbery would regularly print a legitimate poem next to a Malley poem for his creative writing class’s final exam, and would ask students to identify the hoax. The results were usually about 50–50.

So, what is the moral of this cautionary tale? Certainly an editor should never be so trusting, and the provenance of all written works should be carefully researched. However, because Malley’s work today remains better known than that of Stewart or McAuley under their real names, perhaps the lesson has to do with never taking oneself too seriously.

Q.1. According to the passage, at the time of the hoax, McAuley and Stewart were all of these things EXCEPT:
(a) Australian
(b) conservative
(c) youthful
(d) salesmen

Correct Answer is Option (d)
 This question requires locating supporting details or evidence. According to the passage, in paragraph 2, it is mentioned that Harold Stewart and James McAuley were among the conservatives who opposed the modernist poetry published in Angry Penguins magazine. There is no indication that either McAuley or Stewart were salesmen. Therefore, the correct answer is D.

Q.2. Which of the following statementsis NOT presented as evidence that the ErnMalley hoax had a profound influence on the direction of Australian poetry?
(a) Angry Penguins closed up shop.
(b) The New York School championed surrealist verse.
(c) The modernist movement was completely derailed.
(d) Some critics backpedaled furiously.

Correct Answer is Option (b)
This question asks to assess evidence. The hypothesis is that the Ern Malley hoax had a profound influence on the direction of Australian poetry. The statements that support this hypothesis are: the closure of Angry Penguins (choice A), the derailing of the modernist movement (choice C), and the backpedaling of some critics (choice D). However, the statement that the New York School championed surrealist verse (choice B) is unrelated to the influence of the hoax. Therefore, the correct answer is B.

Q.3. The passage implies that McAuley and Stewart were motivated by:
(a) greed
(b) principle
(c) spite
(d) rage

Correct Answer is Option (c)
This question asks to draw conclusions about the motivations of McAuley and Stewart. It requires making inferences based on the passage. Although the passage indicates that the two men wanted to prove the ridiculousness of modernist poetry, their use of Max Harris in the hoax suggests a sense of spite. Therefore, choice C is the better answer. There is no support for choices A or D McAuley and Stewart did not have any monetary gain or seem irate in the passage.

Q.4. Given the information in this passage, if you were given two unfamiliar poems, one by Ern Malley and the other by a distinguished poet, which of these outcomes would MOST likely occur?
(a) You would be as likely to praise the Ern Malley poem as the real poem.
(b) You would identify the Ern Malley poem as the legitimate work.
(c) You would be able to discern the true poem from the hoax.
(d) You would think both poems had equal merit.

Correct Answer is Option (a)
This question requires making predictions based on the information in the passage. In paragraph 6, it is mentioned that John Ashbery would perform an experiment where he would present a legitimate poem alongside an Ern Malley poem to his creative writing class, and the results were usually about 50-50. This suggests that even professional critics were unable to consistently distinguish between the two. Therefore, it is likely that someone encountering unfamiliar poems by Ern Malley and a distinguished poet would be as likely to praise the Ern Malley poem as the real poem. Hence, the correct answer is A.

Q.5. Which of the following incidents BEST supports the author’s belief that editors should never be as trusting as Max Harris was?
(a) For centuries, some scholars have insisted that either Bacon or Marlowe wrote works attributed to Shakespeare.
(b) Reporter Stephen Glass repeatedly falsified quotations in widely-read stories for the New Republic.
(c) Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh first broke the story of the massacre of civilians at My Lai.
(d) Editor Harold Ross encouraged writers for the New Yorker to publish the truth always tinged with humor.

Correct Answer is Option (b)
This question requires incorporating information from the passage with new information to come up with a conclusion. The belief stated is that editors should never be as trusting as Max Harris was. Among the given options, choices C and D do not involve a question of trust between editor and writer. Choice A involves trust between editor and reader rather than editor and writer. However, choice B, where a writer repeatedly falsified quotations, directly relates to the trust between editor and writer. Therefore, choice B best supports the author's belief.