I am writing you are reading this now now now

[kate_schaefer]

I'm reading a novel written in present tense. It's a pretty good novel, so I go on reading it. Suddenly, I understand once again why novels shouldn't be written in present tense, and only the shortest and most painfully vivid of short stories should be written in present tense: present tense distances the reader from the things that are happening. It's a convention of how we read. Present tense isn't the story; it's the synopsis, it's The Story So Far. As I'm reading the novel, the presentness of present tense makes everything narrated seem as though it has already happened some time in the past, which makes it seem emotionally distant. The pastness of past tense is as invisible to a reader as he said in a passage of dialogue; we know how it works, so it slides by.

In the particular novel I'm reading, present tense is a good choice. With the number of murders and wars and explosions and beatings and rapes and involuntary operations included in this novel, if it were written in an ordinary narrative style, I'd be so emotionally wrought up that I would have taken the book back to the library unfinished by now. In present tense, it's pushed away from me, pushed away enough that I can see the political outlines of what the author is trying to do, and it's interesting enough to keep me reading.

The novel is Fairyland, by Paul J. McAuley. My younger granddaughter took it out of the library while she was visiting last week; given that the other books she took out were by Anne McCaffrey and McCaffrey-equivalents, I think she was misled by the title and by the fact that one of the main characters is apparently a twelve-year-old girl. She has read some pretty dark fiction -- she likes Garth Nix, for instance -- but I think she'd be bored by this one, and in fact I didn't ever notice her carrying it around.

Comments

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

I am thinking more than somewhat that the best writer in the present tense is Damon Runyon, for the very reasons you are elucidating above.

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

I am thinking that you are right, though for somewhat different reasons than heretofore elucidated. Another thing present tense cues for native English speakers is the joke: so this guy walks into a bar. Damon Runyon's present tense tells us that we can expect something funny. There is something else that Runyon does that tells us that there is more going on than the simply funny, but it's been so long since I've read him that I don't remember what it is.

[davidgoldfarb.livejournal.com]

Charlie Stross uses present tense for both Accelerando and The Atrocity Archives and he manages to make it work as conveying draw-you-in immediacy. Probably because both books have plots that rush forward headlong.

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

What I've read of Stross so far (stories in Asimov's</> which I believe eventually became Accelerando) impressed me with their clutter of futuristic ideas and speed of events, but not with their comprehensibility or immediacy of reading experience. Mileage, et cetera, but they were more work to read than I like, which threw me out of the stories over and over again. It is not that I dislike prose that takes work to read; I'm a big fan of Delany, for instance. I do dislike prose that takes work to read that doesn't pay off for me in multiple dimensions, and so far Stross's prose doesn't do that for me. I realize that I'm being lame here in not giving examples, but this isn't Kate's space for literary criticism; this is Kate's space for informal conversation.

[davidgoldfarb.livejournal.com]

I've just finished re-reading Accelerando and I can say that I didn't find it work to get through, but I can see why some people would. As you say, mileage.

I do find myself curious to know what you make of The Atrocity Archives, which is also headlong present, but which doesn't have the deliberate thick density of SFnal ideas. That might tell us whether you were having difficulty with the self-conscious geekiness or whether Stross's prose just doesn't work for you. (As Cherryh's doesn't work for me.) I think it's going to come out in MMPB later this year. I like it a lot, but then I like Accelerando too (I'm tentatively planning to give it my first-place Hugo vote).

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

One thing that I know Stross has been doing is writing very quickly to fulfill contracts; he's written about that several places. I see him as very, very talented, and I look forward to what he does once he's able to pace himself.

Cherryh's prose has always worked well for me, but with a bit of distance. She's formal, which suits her subject (I see her subject as ethics, by the way, rather than space opera; space opera is just the genre in which she deploys and displays her subject). I haven't read her in a few years, but may start again, because my granddaughters have read some of her books.

There are limits to what I read for the sake of the grandchildren. No matter how many doorstops and bad pun compendia they leave lying around, I will not read Jordan or Anthony.

[klages.livejournal.com]

I disagree. I use present tense to pull the reader into the detailed immediacy of the moment, or to get into a very, very tight POV.

For me, *past* tense means everything has already happened, and the outcome is known (somewhere, by someone).

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

So far, your stories have worked fine for me, so you must be pulling this off successfully for my aesthetics, or your voice in my head may make it work for me.

We can argue about this all across Nebraska. Are we going across Nebraska? (Looks.) Yep.

Preseeeennnnt, TENSE!

[tomaqmar.livejournal.com]

FWIW, I once heard (at Clarion? after, I think) the claim made for present tense: that even the narrator him/herself does not know what is going to happen next. This applies to omniscienct third-person narrators, too. Not so omniscient NOW, eh?

If so, it seems strange that the effect of it would be to distance the reader. Not saying you're wrong to feel that way, only that it strikes me as the author striking you in the exact opposite way he/she intended.

To me the theory suggests that present tense is an important part of the toolbox, but like everything else it helps to know what you are doing and why.

None of which prevented or prevents me from enjoying stories written in the present tense. I think that back when I read a lot faster than I do now, I often didn't notice the story was in present tense. I know that's the case for a lot of the iconic Robert Silverberg stories. I now wonder if he had any conscious reason to write in PT or if he did it 'cause all the cool kids were doing it by 1969.