#12 - Global Reference, Must Be True

[Administrator]

Please post your questions below! Thank you!

[ali124]

Could you help me understand why the answer is (E)? I saw the author of Passage B disagreeing with (E) but wasn't sure if the author of Passage A hinted an opinion. Psg A discusses techniques to "get away with" lying (21), but does this necessarily mean that readers expect factual accuracy and will not notice that a lie has been told? I understood it as meaning that even if readers notice a lie, that will not hold the author against it.

I chose (A) instead thinking author of Psg A agrees while author of Psg B disagrees, but upon second look, I think we don't know what author of Psg A thinks about (A).

Thank you!

[Claire Horan]

Hi Ali124,

The second part of your post suggests you may have read the question stem incorrectly. You wrote:

I chose (A) instead thinking author of Psg A agrees while author of Psg B disagrees, but upon second look, I think we don't know what author of Psg A thinks about (A).

But, the question stem asks for an answer choice that BOTH the authors would disagree with. (Your comment suggests you were trying to answer a question more like "Which statement would the authors disagree about?")

At any rate, I agree with you that we don't really know what the author of passage A would think about the statement in choice (A).

As for answer choice (E), you said in your comment that you understood passage A as saying, in line 21, that "even if readers notice a lie, that [they] will not hold the author against it." I agree with you, so the author of passage A would disagree with the statement in (E).

My guess is that you read the passages perfectly but made your mistake when reading the question stem! Please follow up with more questions if you're still fuzzy on this.

Thanks for the question!

[ali124]

I see where the issue was! Thank you so much!

[caseyh123]

I don't really understand how this line "Of course, some lies go too far and alienate the reader. Some are too obvious. But some lying is necessary, and to get away with it, one has to be both subtle and convincing." implies the author of passage a thinks that readers do not expect complete factual accuracy. The line says nothing about the reader's expectations, only about what their reaction will be if they know for certain they are being lied to. Getting away with lying to me seems more like making the reader unaware there is a lie, not lying within what the reader deems acceptable (because we have no information about whether the reader thinks any sort of lie is acceptable)

[KelseyWoods]

Hi Casey!

When the author of passage A says "get away with it," they are not referring to readers being unaware that the historical novel has lies. Rather, they are referring more to whether the lies are believable and acceptable within the confines of the genre. Look at the first paragraph. The author talks about how authors have to invent dialogue when they are depicting the lives of real individuals. Invented dialogue is clearly a lie--how would anyone know what was said in a private conversation between two real people--but it is an "acceptable lie" because without it characters would remain two-dimensional. The lies that writers tell have to be "convincing" not to make readers believe that everything they are reading about the private interactions of a real individuals is factually accurate, but to make readers believe that what they are reading is feasible rather than completely fantastical.

Hope this helps!

Best,
Kelsey

[WarnerHuntingtonIII]

I got this one right by process of elimination. Here is my problem: I can point to evidence in Passage B for Answer E but not to Passage A.

Passage B, final paragraph, second sentence: "Nonetheless, the trust a reader brings to reading an autobiography is a trust in a convincingly told tale, not the trust one brings to a newspaper article." So we know the author believes readers do not expect factual accuracy.

But passage A? Please help!

[Robert Carroll]

WarnerHuntingtonIII,

"In effect, the creation of a good narrative requires the telling of lies."

I think there are other places too - good writing requires lying, so it's not possible that readers expect complete factual accuracy. In fact, "factual accuracy" is nonsensical when it comes to fiction!

Robert Carroll

[mkarimi73]

I'm sorry. I am going to have to respectfully disagree and ask the question that has already been asked earlier. How is there even the slightest threshold of proof that Passage A disagrees with (E)? You'd have to add several assumptions to it for it to work. In addition, (A) isn't a great contender either. I can't find proof from Passage A where the author even speaks to the topic of "emotional vividness." Please help on where I can find textual support from Passage A to confidently choose answer choice (E)!

(As a side note: Is this just another question that the test-makers like to put on here, just to prevent folks from getting 180s? Because that's what it is starting to look like.)

[Jeff Wren]

Hi mkarimi73,

Questions asking about an author or authors "would be likely to agree (or disagree) with" do sometimes require you to draw reasonable inferences from the passage.

The author of Passage A is discussing the conventions of historical novels. It is reasonable to assume that the author understands that readers are aware of these conventions. For example, the fact that a recently written novel set in medieval times doesn't use correct periodic language because it would be unintelligible to most modern readers (lines 2-4) would be something that a modern reader would be aware of and would find perfectly acceptable, even necessary although it does not contain "complete factual accuracy."

It's a bit like the "willing suspension of disbelief" convention of audience members of a theater performance or a movie.

Hope this helps!