Chapter Two - The Distinction of the Present Tense in Narrative

Summary

Why not call the present the sum of all?

George Garrett, Death of the Fox (1971: 139)

The status of the present tense in narrative remains ambiguous, and, indeed, may be related to the polarity of narratological positions vis-a-vis the mimetic versus non- or anti-mimetic character of temporality in fictional worlds. However, the use of this tense in fiction is still a new and only very tentatively mapped field in narratology. An evolution may be traced in the treatment of present-tense narration: from neglect and dismissal, to occasional studies of instances of its use as an anomaly, or literary experiment, to a grudging endorsement and a growing recognition of the potential of the present tense as a narrative tense. In the wake of the more and more frequent employment of this tense in fiction, a few attempts have been made at developing a theory and a methodology for the analysis of present-tense narrative. Admittedly, much of the work that has been done on temporality in narrative (some results of which were outlined in the previous chapter) is applicable to narrative in the present tense, but its singularity also calls for specific explorations. This chapter as well as the subsequent textual analyses aim to contribute to this emergent line of inquiry.

The relatively rare incidence of narration in the present tense, if compared with the prevalence of past-tense narration in literary history, stands in stark contrast to the universality of lived experience, which, as Mark Currie stresses, takes place in the present: “We inhabit the present, which is sandwiched between a fixed past and an open future” (2007: 5). The equivalence of presence and existence is reflected in the deployment of grammatical tenses: “‘has been’ and ‘will be’ are equivalent to ‘is not,’ since what ‘is’ must be rendered in the present” (Currie 2007: 8). The present functions as a crucial determinant of individual being; in the words of David Carr, “I am always ‘located’ in the now with respect to past and future experiences” (1986: 27).

In narratology, a long-established axiom is that, as Robert Scholes said, “narrative is past, always past” (qtd. in Cohn 1999: 96). It is widely accepted that narrative is subsequent to rather than contemporaneous with experience.