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OFFICIAL ACT Form E23 · December 2021

Reading

20 questions ~9 min recommended
⏱ 00:00
Score
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=== Passage A ===
Appleton, Wisconsin, or Cairo, Egypt, that I don’t get a pang of nostalgia for the old reporting days. I was once a newspaper man myself has come to be a fun phrase. But practically everyone seems to have been, or to have wanted to be, a newspaper reporter. Ink. The building smelled of ink, spilled and bled. The printing shop and pressroom were separated from the front office only by a doorway, and the door never was closed. There were the type forms and tables, the linotype machine (a new and fearsome invention to me), the small press, the big newspaper press, the boiler plate, the trays of type, all the paraphernalia that goes to make up the heart of a small-town newspaper. The smell of it. The front room is its head, but without the back room it could not function or even live. The linotype and the small press went all day, for there the advertising was set up and printed, as well as handbills, programs, all the odds and ends classified as job printing. Mac, who ruled this domain, was the perfect example of the fictional printer. He had come in years before, his brown hair curled over a mild brow, his limp shirt seemed perennial. But his eye was infallible, and few if any shrdlus and etaoins marred the fair sequence of Mac’s copy. His voice was soft, gentle, drawling, but he was boss of the print shop from the cat to the linotype operator. Mac seldom talked but sometimes—rarely—he appeared in the front office, a drooping figure, with a piece of news by which he had come in some devious way. Standing at the side of the city editor’s desk he would deliver himself of this information, looking mild and limply romantic. It always proved to be a bombshell. Pinned like a manifesto to a bulletin board in the center of this ink-perfumed building was a typewritten note from my new employer, announcing that on this day, October 17, 1983, I would begin working as a reporter for a daily newspaper. The note formalized my calling in life with a splash of perspective that would stay with me forever: Dan is a former intern at the Daily News in New York and a graduate assistant for the journalism department at New York University. His writing has appeared in the Daily News, the New York Times, and the Rocky Mountain News. Soon it will appear in trashcans throughout north-central Connecticut. Please make him feel relevant. Reading the note, I thought, I’m home. Finding my way had not been easy. The internship at the Daily News had ended, the graduate degree from NYU had been shoved in a drawer, and I had returned to living beside the sump pump in my parents’ basement. I spent my days splitting sod for a lawn and sprinkling company alongside Eddie, who had taken to calling me 'Professor,' and my nights typing out professional love letters to the New London Day, the Asbury Park Press, the Poughkeepsie Journal, the Stamford Advocate, the Anywhere Clarion-Bugle-Star-Record-Sentinel, and every other Northeastern newspaper that I had never read.

=== Mavis Staples and the Staples Singers ===
tive anonymity of Mavis Staples was puzzling. With an improbably deep voice bursting out of a diminutive five-foot frame, she projected the deepest commitment to whatever she was singing, losing herself in every word as though reliving a critical moment in her personal story...

1. It can reasonably be inferred that Passage A is narrated from the point of view of someone who:

2. Based on Passage A, the narrator believes that, compared to what goes on in the front office, what goes on in the printing shop and pressroom is:

3. The narrator of Passage A most nearly characterizes Mac as both:

4. According to the narrator of Passage A, Mac would occasionally appear in the front office in order to:

5. What is the epiphany the narrator of Passage B experienced at the age of twenty-five?

6. Based on Passage B, the note that the narrator’s employer wrote can best be described as:

7. The last sentence of Passage B mainly serves to indicate that the narrator:

8. Compared to the description of the newspaper office mentioned in Passage A, the description of the newspaper office mentioned in Passage B provides less information about the:

9. Compared to Passage A, the style of Passage B is more strongly characterized by its use of:

10. Based on the passages, who would be most likely to associate the smell of ink with pleasant memories?

11. The main purpose of the passage is to:

12. It can most reasonably be inferred from the passage that Mavis Staples’s relative anonymity in the ’60s was puzzling to her fans mainly because she had a:

13. In the context of the passage, what does the author most nearly mean when he states, “Part of this was by design” (line 10)?

14. The main purpose of the third paragraph (lines 26–34) is to:

15. The main idea of the seventh paragraph (lines 56–65) is that:

16. Based on the passage, regarding his family, Pops Staples’s attitude can best be described as:

17. As it is used in line 5, the phrase losing herself most nearly refers to the way Mavis Staples:

18. According to the passage, what event led directly to Mavis Staples becoming the lead singer of the Staples Singers?

19. Based on the passage, Bell’s reaction to hearing Mavis Staples’s performance of “On My Way to Heaven” can most nearly be described as one of:

20. The passage indicates that, compared to the songs traditionally chosen by the Staples Singers, the songs chosen for Mavis Staples’s first solo album were:

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