What Mighty Contests

I don't just get my sports jollies from men in baggy shorts and baseball caps. Every now and again, I like to check in on the tweedier contests of the more erudite-- and  galactically less coordinated. From the Book Bench, the New Yorker books blog, comes this interesting round up of a recent table quiz that pitted three teams-- of authors, editors and agents-- against one another in a winner-take-all, 5 v 5 literary trivia battle royale. Although the authors ultimately took home the fake, plastic trophy, the best line of the night came from the mouth of a disgruntled literary agent.  I'll let the Book Bench's Victoria Loustalot set the scene, and deliver the well-timed kicker:

In the first round, when Lethem correctly answered the question “The clocks strike thirteen in the opening line of what classic novel?” (answer: “1984” by George Orwell), a feisty young agent in knee-high black leather boots yelled, “Get a job!”

The contest was sponsored by Splice magazine, a Brooklyn-based literary journal I never knew existed.