the author presents the life of Zane Grey with (i) __________ unusual in a biographer: he is not even convinced that Grey was a good writer.
(A) a zeal
(B) a deftness
© a detachment
(D) an eloquence
(E) an imaginativeness
The answer is C.
But I noticed from " not even convinced that Grey was a good writer" that he kind of hate him. So, he isn’t neutral or unbiased. Detachment is bit neutral here, but I’m not sure if zeal could work as biased in -ve way. Any thoughts ?
If you were to leave out detachment, what is the logic behind choosing anything else?
zeal: fervor; passion
deftness: great skill
eloquence: fluent or persuasive speaking
imaginativeness: creativeness
detachment: aloof
Now, what would be unusual for a biographer?
I think we can assume that a person would write about someone else’s life only if they have some level of interest in that person’s life. Thus, an unusual thing for a biographer would be to not care and be distant about the very person they are writing about.
Other than that, looking at the sentence we get no evidence for the skill being employed by the biographer. If you are still unsure about zeal, then look at the part of the sentence after the colon, it says the biographer isn’t convinced about something. That could imply a lack of zeal on the biographer’s part. There is no negative word present before the blank to suggest lack, hence making zeal the wrong choice.
I hope that helps.
P.S. I think detachment does have a negative connotation. @gregmat do you think that would be a fair understanding of the word?
I agree with you, I wouldn’t feel super enthusiastic about choosing C either (I filled in ‘skepticism’ without looking at the answers), but it would have to be done through process of elimination because nothing else would make sense.
Remember you’re not choosing the best answer ever, you’re just choosing the best answer from that group of 5.