Word: middlemarch
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...Clark's heavy use of metaphors. Every character's gesture and description of setting evokes a precise image in Clark's mind that he can capture only in reference to another. While these images are exacting and often beautiful, they are confusing. In the words of George Eliot's Middlemarch, which Clark was reading while he was writing his novel, "we get our thoughts entangled in metaphors...
...likes of Dickens, Thackeray, Balzac, Eliot and Flaubert used to such great effect. We met earthy Salvadoran maids, beadle-like cops, bumbling civil servants, stalwart limo drivers, beaten-down screenwriters manquas and, of course, comically obsequious houseguests. Occupying the top of the social pecking order in this modern-day Middlemarch was the defendant himself, living a life that would be the envy of any 19th century man of leisure: pleasant days at the country club filled with golf and card playing, nights lost to the social whirl, gentlemanly "work" that consisted of getting paid to play even more golf. Unfailingly...
...doesn't bother me at all. I think it is one of the advantages of television that millions of people have come to the great classics simply because they have seen them on television. Jane Austen, Middlemarch,, you know, through television. I think it's much better to read the books than watch television, obviously. On the whole, I've been quite fortunate with the television versions. I think they've done pretty well. Some better than others. The Dalgliesh isn't my idea of Dalgliesh...
...people with attention spans geared to television. Short chapters. Short paragraphs. Short sentences. They have the rhythms of stand-up monologues. Lots of conversational asides, jokey hyperbole and the sort of slangy sentence structure you don't usually see in print. So what did you think, you were getting Middlemarch...
Right, and what if Home Improvement had bombed? Then people are in the bookstore going, "Hey, here's a book by that guy whose show was canceled last season after eight weeks. Let's go pick up a copy of Middlemarch...