By Alicia Fletcher. “Mansfield Park? You’ve got to be kidding! That’s a notoriously bad book,” asserts Tom Townsend (Edward Clements) in Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan (1990), moments before memorably declaring that he never reads novels, favouring “good literary criticism” instead (though he later relents by confessing to a mild enjoyment of Persuasion). That onscreen disparagement aside,…