Ezekiel Mphahlele

A free, expert breakdown of this official LSAT Reading Comprehension question.

TopicsNon-Author OpinionHumanities

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Passage

The work of South African writer Ezekiel Mphahlele has confounded literary critics, especially those who feel compelled to draw a sharp distinction between autobiography and fiction. These critics point to Mphahlele's best-known works—his 1959 autobiography Down Second Avenue and his 1971 novel The Wanderers—to illustrate the problem of categorizing his work. While that Mphahlele manipulates different prose forms purely in the service of the social message he advances.

Even where critics give him a favorable reading, all too often their reviews carry a negative subtext. For example, one critic said of The Wanderers that if anger, firsthand experiences, compassion, and topicality were the sole requirements for great literature, the novel might well be one of the masterpieces of this declining balk at this vision because Mphahlele provides no road maps for bringing such a future about.

Mphahlele himself shows little interest in establishing guidelines to distinguish autobiography from fiction. Though he does refer to Down Second Avenue as an autobiography and The Wanderers as a novel, he asserts that no novelist can write complete fiction or absolute fact. It is the nature of writing, at least the writing social criticism of one kind or another. If you don't, you are completely irrelevant—you don't count."

What this question is testing

Non-Author Opinion

Anticipate

This is a Non-Author Opinion question. The question asks what Mphahlele himself would most agree with.

P3 is where Mphahlele's own views are spelled out. He doesn't care about distinguishing autobiography from fiction. He says no writer can produce pure fiction or pure fact. The whole point of writing has nothing to do with classification. So Mphahlele would agree: writers don't have to fit their work into predetermined categories.

Goal

Find the answer that says writers don't need to fit their work to predetermined categories. Common traps:

Answers about all literature articulating a "vision of the future" — Mphahlele has a social vision, but he's not making a universal rule about what literature must do

Answers saying most "novels" could be classified as autobiographies — Mphahlele wouldn't make that classification claim

Answers identifying the "most useful" categories — Mphahlele doesn't rank category schemes

Reading along? Open the full official question in LawHub — we show a fragment here and keep the reasoning in our own words.

The question

Based on the passage, with which one of the following statements would Mphahlele be most

Answer choices

Too Strong3% picked this
All works of literature should articulate a vision of
Mphahlele has a vision of the future and wants writing to serve social criticism — but he doesn't make the universal rule that all works of literature should articulate a vision of the future. His view is more general (writing should engage in social criticism) and less specifically future-oriented than (A) suggests.
3%
Correct94% picked this
It is not necessary for a writer to write works to
Why this is right
P3 makes Mphahlele's view explicit. He shows little interest in distinguishing autobiography from fiction, asserts that no novelist can write pure fiction or pure fact, and says the "whole point" of writing has nothing to do with classification. (B) captures that view directly: writers don't need to fit their work into predetermined categories.
Skill tested: Non-Author Opinion · how this choice captures the passage's function is the move to repeat next time.
94%
Wrong View1% picked this
Literary categories are worth addressing only when literary works are being
Mphahlele doesn't treat categories as worth addressing only when works are unjustifiably dismissed. P3 says the "whole point" of writing has nothing to do with classification — he'd see the categories as a distraction in any context, not just when works are dismissed.
1%
Too Strong2% picked this
Most works of literature that resemble novels could accurately be classified
Mphahlele believes all writing draws from experience to some degree, but he doesn't claim "most works of literature that resemble novels could accurately be classified as autobiographies." That's a specific reclassification claim Mphahlele is not making — and would resist, since he doesn't care about classification.
2%
Wrong View1% picked this
The most useful categories in literature are those that distinguish prose from poetry and
Mphahlele doesn't rank category schemes by usefulness. His position is that classification isn't the point of writing — so saying prose/poetry/drama distinctions are the "most useful" categories puts him in a debate he's not interested in.
1%

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