Good morning, readers and book lovers, and welcome to yet another open forum! It would give me indescribable happiness if one of all ye faithful would contribute a diary we could discuss. It’s so great when that happens! However (sniff), it appears that you’re stuck with me again.
But at least there’s breakfast to look forward to, and today it’s especially suited to the season. To tempt your tastebuds we have Yogurt Fruit Smoothies—peach, strawberry, and blueberry. And as today is Lammas ("loaf mass" in Anglo-Saxon) we have bread in the form of English muffins, cinnamon raisin or plain. Toasted to crunchy perfection, they're dripping with melting butter and sticky with champagne marmalade. Do tuck in—you’ll need fortification for our topic today.
The burning question this morning is: do you, could you, read novels written in the present tense? Why or why not?
Let me be the first to answer. I do not and could not read novels written in the present tense. Believe me, I’ve tried. Years ago I picked up Scott Turow’s highly regarded legal thriller, Presumed Innocent, but when I saw that it was written in the present tense I faltered. I hemmed. I hawed, but not heartily. I put it down and haven’t picked it up since.
Since then, not wanting to be a complete old fuddy-duddy, I’ve tried again. At this very moment I have on my Kindle a copy of Wolf Hall, which my English niece recommended highly. I bought it, started reading it, and…well, you can guess.
Of course, an extraordinarily large segment of the reading population disagrees with me. These readers evidently love reading novels written in the present tense. Many such novels become best sellers. If happy little readers fly o'er the rainbow with these present-tense novels why, oh why, can’t I?
In a word—the present tense is unconvincing. I know that the action of the story is not taking place in real time at this very minute, because unseen hands have set that book manuscript into galleys and printed it if it’s a hardcopy book, or have formatted that book and given it an ISBN and made it available for sale, if it’s an e-book. All of that happened in the past, which is why I can’t sit there and read such sentences as, “I open the window to see my neighbor, as usual, barking at the dog to fetch the newspaper, which the paper carrier has once again thrown on the sidewalk…”
To be charitable, I think those who write in the present tense have a goal in mind, which is to make you think you’re experiencing it exactly as the protagonist is experiencing it, seeing everything through his eyes, feeling his emotions as he feels them. These writers probably hope to achieve the immediacy of film or television.
It’s true that sometimes a really well-written television drama can entrance you so thoroughly that you forget you’re watching TV. That happened to me once, when I was watching an episode of “Hill Street Blues.” I forgot I was sitting in a chair in my family room watching television: I was there, I was in the room with those characters, living through the drama with them.
But—and here is the central core of my argument—a really well-written book, written in the conventional way, in which the protagonist moves through the action in past tense, can achieve the same result. After all, why do I read? I read to escape the pleasant tedium of everyday life (the care of my baby grandson, nicknamed “the poop-shooter,” runaway beagles, the unending quest for a fast, easy way to cook the fish for dinner), and explore another country, another time, another world, even.
With novels written conventionally, I can suspend disbelief to step aboard the time machine and be swept away in a current of fiction. Sometimes when I’m reading I do become so entranced I forget I’m sitting in a chair, reading. That’s the kind of escape I like, that complete surrender to the power of narrative.
But with novels written in the present tense, there’s an insuperable barrier to my enjoyment. I always know that I’m-sitting-in-a-chair-reading-a-book-written-in-a-gimmicky style. And that, dear readers, is not for me.
Is it for you? What do YOU think about this? Do you find present tense a barrier to that “willing suspension of disbelief” that enables you to board the salvage tug Wastrel in the 25th century A.D. or march along a metalled road under a silver eagle in northern Britannia in A.D. 120?
Or do you think my arguments as stated are all stuff and nonsense? Come on, tell us what you think—the floor is yours!