Clocks

Jerome Klapka Jerome is an English writer of the turn of the century. He is known especially for his humorous novels and travelogues, mainly his Three Men in a Boat which has made his fame and wealth. His work entitled Clocks is a humorous essay that speaks about his personal experience with clocks. In fact, the essay is an informal, entertaining investigation of the place of clocks in our modern life. It is the perfect clocks that always disappoint us according to Jerome, rather than wrong clocks. Jerome describes a modern life where people are in a continuous struggle with time while the latter always ends up winning the fight. Perfect clocks are always hated just like people who dare face you with the simple truth, people who never use hyperboles or euphemisms in the way they describe the reality of things. Such clocks are, therefore, useless since our modern world is based on exaggeration and on the unfaithful representation of reality. “Truth and fact are old-fashioned and out-of-date, my friends,” says Jerome. They “fit only for the dull and vulgar to live by. Appearance, not reality, is what the clever dog grasps at in these clever days. We spurn the dull-brown solid earth; we build our lives and homes in the fair-seeming rainbow-land of shadow and chimera.”