AA HA 12G T1 Unit 1 W1 1 {Golden TV}

1.    Which of these quotes best explains Hamid’s advice to novelists?

• “And the novel needs to keep changing if it is to remain novel.

• “In the future, novelists need not abandon plot and character, but would do well to bear in mind the novel’s weirdness.”

• . “It must, pilfering a phrase from TV, boldly go where no one has gone before.”

• The novel should only do what the serial drama could never do.”

Answer explanation

In this sentence, Hamid is telling future novelists to embrace the novel’s weirdness.

The mention of Sergei Eisenstein adds to the development of Kirsch’s argument about Dickens mainly by (paragraph 4).

Ironically, the comparison to Dickens, which is meant to suggest that TV has reached a new level of quality, harks back to the very beginning of modern filmmaking. Already in 1944, Sergei Eisenstein suggested in a landmark essay that the film grammar invented by D. W. Griffith was deeply indebted to Dickens’s narrative strategies. Dickens, he wrote, was the real inventor of montage. If today’s best TV feels Dickensian, that may be because the conventions of filmed storytelling themselves derive from Dickens — who in turn, Eisenstein points out, was influenced by the stage melodramas of his day. Indeed, one criticism that could be leveled against quality cable TV is that it is not nearly as formally adventurous as Dickens himself. Its visual idiom tends to be conventional even when its subject matter is ostentatiously provocative.

• showing the reader that Kirsch is an expert in his field

• defining the word melodrama

• showing the reader that the comparison of movies and TV to Charles Dickens is not new

• helping the reader understand more about the history of movies and TV

Answer explanation

Kirsch mentions Eisenstein to further the argument that the comparison of film to Charles Dickens is not a new observation.

Hamid’s purpose in the following passage (paragraph 14) is mainly .

Television is not the new novel. Television is the old novel.

• to argue that writers of novels should do new and interesting things

• to argue that television is not the new novel

• to argue that television is more expensive

• to show that he has neutral feelings about the difference between television and the novel

Answer explanation

Hamid argues that novelists can try new and interesting things because they are no longer bound to things like character, plot and setting because of television

4. Which of these inferences about novels is best supported by the passage below (paragraph 6)?

Spectacle and melodrama remain at the heart of TV, as they do with all arts that must reach a large audience in order to be economically viable. But it is voice, tone, the sense of the author’s mind at work, that are the essence of literature, and they exist in language, not in images.

• Novels are unique because they can express ideas and emotions that images cannot.

• Voice and tone are important characteristics of literature.

• Novels are not economically viable.

• Novels do not contain melodrama.

Answer explanation

Hamid says that voice, tone, and the sense of the author’s mind at work all are specific to language, not images.

5. Which of these sentences best summarizes the passage below (paragraph 3)?

It’s not surprising that the novelist most often mentioned in this context is Charles Dickens. Dickens, like Shakespeare, was both a writer of genius and a popular entertainer, proving that seriousness of purpose didn’t preclude accessibility. His novels appeared in serial installments, like episodes of TV shows, and teemed with minor characters, the literary equivalent of character actors. “The Wire,” in particular, has been likened to a Dickens novel, for its attention to the details of poverty and class in America. Bill Moyers was echoing what has become conventional wisdom when he said that what Dickens was “to the smoky mean streets of Victorian London, David Simon is to America today.”

• Dickens and Shakespeare are similar figures.

• Dickens and Shakespeare argued that complex ideas should be expressed through traditional art forms only.

  .

• “The Wire” is an adaptation of a Charles Dickens novel, with its themes of poverty and social reform.

• Charles Dickens’s writing is similar to television because he wrote accessible novels in serial installments, like television episodes

Answer explanation

The final quote in the paragraph summarizes the comparison between Dickens’s writing and Simon’s TV shows.

6. Which of these sentences from paragraph 3 best supports the correct answer to Question 5?

• It’s not surprising that the novelist most often mentioned in this context is Charles Dickens.”

• “Dickens, like Shakespeare, was both a writer of genius and a popular entertainer, proving that seriousness of purpose didn’t preclude accessibility.”

• “His novels appeared in serial installments, like episodes of TV shows, and teemed with minor characters, the literary equivalent of character actors.”

• D.“Bill Moyers was echoing what has become conventional wisdom when he said that what Dickens was ‘to the smoky mean streets of Victorian London, David Simon is to America today.’”

Answer explanation

This sentence supports the idea that Dickens is similar to modern television writers.

7 Which of these inferences about is best supported by the passage below (paragraph 1)?

Television was so bad for so long, it’s no surprise that the arrival of good television has caused the culture to lose its head a bit. Since the debut of “The Sopranos” in 1999, we have been living, so we are regularly informed, in a “golden age” of television. And over the last few years, it’s become common to hear variations on the idea that quality cable TV shows are the new novels. Thomas Doherty, writing in The Chronicle of Higher Education, called the new genre “Arc TV” — because its stories follow long, complex arcs of development — and insisted that “at its best, the world of Arc TV is as exquisitely calibrated as the social matrix of a Henry James novel.”

• The quality of television has declined.

• The quality of television has increased so much that it has created a new genre.

• Television continues its long history of quality, complicated story-telling.

• The quality of television has increased, which is clearly demonstrated by high viewership ratings.

Answer explanation

The author quotes an expert as calling recent television a new genre.

8. Which of these sentences from the passage best supports the correct answer to Question 7?

• “Television was so bad for so long,”

• “Since the debut of ‘The Sopranos’ in 1999, we have been living, so we are regularly informed, in a ‘golden age’ of television.”

• “Thomas Doherty, writing in The Chronicle of Higher Education, called the new genre ‘Arc TV’ — because its stories follow long, complex arcs of development — and insisted that ‘at its best, the world of Arc TV is as exquisitely calibrated as the social matrix of a Henry James novel.’”

• “And over the last few years, it’s become common to hear variations on the idea that quality cable TV shows are the new novels.”

Answer explanation

In calling television “Arc TV,” Thomas Doherty remarks on how exactly the quality of television has improved.

Which word best defines : to provoke or urge, especially for change

• incites

• melodrama

• ambivalence

• idiom

Which word best defines : a sensational dramatic piece with exaggerated characters and exciting events intended to appeal to the emotions.

having a lot of space inside

• ambivalence

• incites

• capacious

• melodrama