Entry Exam Category: College Admission Exams
Course: Accuplacer
Exam: Accuplacer Reading Comprehension 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 shower some sort of mystical growth hormone on your ideas. Yet for some artists, such as William Carlos Williams, life and art were more than each ether's palate cleansers. The poet doctor saw his dual vocations as mysteriously fused 'They are two parts of a whale,' he contended in his 1967 autobiography. 'It is not two jobs at all.. one rests the man when the other fatigues him.' Asa 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? Complementary? The question, suggesting something like a creative sanctum shimmering a few meters above the room in which you punch a clock or schedule a meeting, supposes 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: Work and art cannot meaningfully complement each other

Correct Answer: D

Rationale: The passage, especially through the example of William Carlos Williams, directly argues that work and art can meaningfully complement each other. Williams viewed his roles as a doctor and poet as 'two parts of a whole,' with each providing rest from the other and even inspiring his creative work. This contradicts the idea that work and art cannot meaningfully support or enhance each other.

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