English Authors Offended By the Present Tense

England: land of quibblers.

Some of the nation’s top writers are at the throat of the present tense. Philip Pullman, author of the His Dark Materials trilogy, said, “I just don’t read present-tense novels any more. It’s a silly affectation, in my view, and it does nothing but annoy.” The richness of the past tense in its perfect, imperfect, and pluperfect forms, he argues, is being traded in for something that reeks of fashion: “This wretched fad has been spreading more and more widely. I can’t see the appeal at all,” he scoffs. The criticism came after the September 7^th announcement of the Man Booker Prize six finalists, half of which were written in the present tense.

Philip Hensher, shortlisted for 2008 Booker Prize, joined Pullman: “[The present tense] is everywhere in the English novel, like Japanese knotweed.”

Whether the present tense has taken over novels in the same way that knotweed has choked the English landscape is debatable, but they seem to have good reason to be up in arms: the past tense is both historically (until Damon Runyan and Joyce Cary in the 1930’s) and popularly favored (five of five on New York Times Hardcover Fiction Best Seller list are in the past tense, starting at the top with Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom).

It is possible, probably likely, that prize-hungry authors are employing verb tense to get to the top, but this seems to be what authors do – find the pulse of literature of their time and go with it.  It’s hardly worth noting that it takes a little more than passing over predicate to stitch together a few hundred pages; if the story’s good, it’s good, regardless of tense.  Pullman and Hensher have at least brought attention to the trends that are setting down roots in today’s literature – but roots, as Hensher would have it, that are as desirable as, say, those of a healthy thicket of Japanese knotweed.