Entry Exam Category: College Admission Exams
Course: Accuplacer
Exam: Accuplacer Reading Timed Practice Test
Practice Question
Extract
The act of producing art can be anything but romantic. To escape the blank page—the only thing on Earth as passive as yourself—you cast about for distractions, half-convinced that avoiding your project will somehow shower a mystical growth hormone on your ideas. Yet for some artists, such as William Carlos Williams, life and art were more than each other’s palate cleansers. The poet-doctor saw his dual vocations as mysteriously fused. 'They are two parts of a whole,' he contended in his 1967 autobiography. 'It is not two jobs at all... one rests the man when the other fatigues him.' As a physician, Williams developed an antenna for the 'inarticulate poems' emanating from his patients, even as he resolved to 'use the material I knew' from practicing medicine in his writing. What, then, is the real relationship between art and trade—agonistic or complementary? The question, which suggests something like a creative sanctum shimmering a few meters above the room in which you punch a clock or schedule a meeting, assumes that aesthetic experience is categorically different from everyday experience, and that muse-fueled invention floats apart from earthier forms of productivity.
Which of the following statements does the passage most directly counter?
Answer Choices
- A: Having a non-arts job stifles and detracts from an artist's creative work.
- B: For people working in non-arts professions, art is more than just an entertaining distraction.
- C: The poetry of William Carlos Williams exemplifies autobiographical poetry.
- D: The public's interest in the arts has declined over the last century.
Correct Answer: A
Rationale: The passage focuses on how William Carlos Williams, a physician and a poet, found his two vocations—medicine and poetry—to be mutually reinforcing rather than in conflict. Williams argued that being a doctor did not hinder his poetry; in fact, it gave him material and helped balance his creative life: 'They are two parts of a whole… one rests the man when the other fatigues him.' This directly counters the idea that a non-artistic job would stifle creativity or detract from artistic pursuits.