Steven Tyler or Sinclair Lewis?
Can you tell the difference between the Aerosmith front man’s outrageous new book Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?: A Rock 'n' Roll Memoir and the Pulitzer prize-winning novel Arrowsmith? Take The Daily Beast quiz.
1. a.“Come into town with me and hear a concert.”
b. “The concerts were getting more rowdy and outrageous.”
2. a. “I’ll be good, oh I’ll be good, but—I’d like to kiss her once, good!”
b. “I’m just looking for a kiss.”
3. a.“It was the worst drinking bout I ever had. You could smell the liquor on my breath and I was ashamed to go to class.”
b. “If you can’t handle your liquor better than that, you’d better cut it out entirely.”
4. a.“If you only knew the wickedness of the natives, and the way they lie and sing indecent songs and commit all manner of vileness!”
b. “Oh, my god, what is that? He’s up there singing and he climbed up on air, on his vocal chords.”
5. a. “Martin went home engaged to two girls at once.”
b. “So many nights I went to sleep dreaming that two gorgeous, nasty twins were going to knock on my door, cover me in rose petals, and perform an after-midnight rectal examination.”
6. a. “Upon returning to the hotel, I recited my nightly prayer.”
b. "It's too hot to walk. Perhaps we'd better go back to the hotel."
7. a. “From him a future physician could learn that most important of all things: the proper drugs to give a patient, particularly when you cannot discover what is the matter with him.”
b. “His talks were so interesting because he would expostulate about his theories. He had some curious poses and stances, which he delivered as psychopharmacological dogma.”
8. a. “Well, of course, we have any kind of costume you want,” chimes Ms. Fields. “Just tell me. We’re here to please.”
b. “Her sulky blue uniform was gone; she was childishly slim and light in a princess frock that was a straight line from high collar and soft young breast to her feet.”
9. a. “Everyone in the group was familiar with New York—they stayed at the St. Regis or the Plaza and went about buying clothes and discovering small smart restaurants.”
b. “Elysa’s mantra was always, ‘Let’s go shopping!’ So Joe, Elysa, and Henry Smith went out to see what was out there and ended up in an antiques store.”
10. a. “The normal man, he does not care much what he does except that he should eat and sleep and make love.”
b. “We came to fly our freak flags. I called it Veni, vidi, vici, veni redux. Latin for: We came, we saw, we conquered—and we came again.”
ANSWERS:
1) a. Lewis b. Tyler
2) a. Lewis b. Tyler
3) a. Tyler b. Lewis
4) a. Lewis b. Tyler
5) a. Lewis b. Tyler
6) a. Tyler b. Lewis
7) a. Lewis b. Tyler
8) a. Tyler b. Lewis
9) a. Lewis b. Tyler
10) a. Lewis b. Tyler
WHAT YOUR SCORE MEANS:
10/10: Wow, you really don’t want to miss a thing.
8 or 9: Joe Perry would be impressed.
6 or 7: A little pitchy, but you worked it out.
4 or 5: Walk this way—to a library.
3 and under: You’d make an excellent groupie.
Michael Solomon is the former features director of The Daily Beast. His writing has appeared in Vanity Fair, Esquire, Elle, and O, and he has published several books, including the Malcolm Gladwell parody Blank: The Power of Not Actually Thinking at All.