Present Tense Is Passe

[tartysuz]

Or, that's what Philip Pullman would like to see.

I completely agree with him that the use of solely the present tense in longer work limits temporal textures, making for tedious reads. But he goes on to a larger issue:

It's an abdication of narrative responsibility, in my view. The storyteller, in film or novel, should take charge of the story and not feel shifty about it. Put the camera in the place from which it can see the action most clearly. Make a decision about where that place is. Put it on something steady to stop that incessant jiggling about. Say what happened, and let the reader know when it happened and what caused it and what the consequences were, and tell me where the characters were and who else was present – and while you're at it, I'd like to know what they looked like and whether it was raining.

But taking charge of the story is the one thing that some sensitive and artistic storytellers don't want to do. They've come to feel a timorous uncertainty about the right-on-ness of something so politically dodgy as telling a story in the first place. Who are we to say this happened and then that happened? Maybe it didn't, perhaps we're wrong, there are other points of view, truth is always provisional, knowledge is always partial, the narrator is always unreliable, and so on.

"If I just relate now what's happening now," the writer seems to say, "I can't be held to account for it. It's the way things are. I'm just standing close to the action as it happens. I'm not editing or anything. It's really real."

Source: The Guardian.

This is actually why I like to think that Inception had a definite end: otherwise, it's narrative wankery. While an indeterminate end might seem clever, it actually takes away from the fact that narrative arcs were successfully completed in the movie -- no small feat in the world of Hollywood movies.

Comments

[yourlibrarian]

It may be part of a particular writing movement as the "limited 3rd person" seems to be. What I noticed about her proposed changes (and why your post reminded me of it) was that they seemed to make the action more immediate but not less "authorial."

I guess when I read I am always aware of the author's presence in the work because all the choices in it are someone's choices, not accidental. It's kind of like a model wearing a dress. We may be intended to focus on the dress and usually do, but that doesn't mean we can forget the model, especially when she affects the outfit in its fit and movement or even the angles from which we see it.

[tartysuz.livejournal.com]

they seemed to make the action more immediate but not less "authorial."

That's a good point. It is quite unnatural consistently use the present tense. As we mentioned above, it's more natural to shilly-shally a bit and fix it later!

It's kind of like a model wearing a dress.

I like that metaphor. To extend it to reading preferences, it's easier on the eye for dresses and model to come in standard sizes and expected draping; it may jar us to see, say, a plus-sized model, or a dress made of plastic. But these are no less deliberate than the model and material choices we're used to seeing.