"It was a dark and stormy night..." begins the famous (or infamous) opening sentence of Edward Bulwer-Lytton's Paul Clifford. As bad as that may be (and it is considered by many to be the worst ever opening sentence in all of literature) it is still better than, "It is a dark and stormy night..." A much more attractive opening sentence is the well-known one from Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." Now, try it this way: "It is the best of times, it is the worst of times..."
It just doesn't work--at least for me. I am a traditionalist (in most cases) and was trained that to tell a story one must tell what happened which by default means something in the past. By reading a story that has happened I am sucked into that reality of events that starts in the past and finishes in the past. Thus, I am "beamed up," in Star Trek speak, and out of my present life, my present situation, my present problems.
On the other hand, a theater play automatically drops the audience into the situation, whether past, present or future. Thus, from the opening line of Shakespeare's Richard III, "It is the winter of our discontent," it is perfectly sensible to use the present tense because then we are taken to the "now" of Richard III's time.
Don't call me Ishmael but if you want you can call me arrogant or call me old-fashioned or call me a literary Luddite, but I refuse to read any novels written in the present tense. When I check the opening page and see the present tense used, the book immediately comes off my "to-read" list. There are so many other books out there anyway (see my post "Re: re-reading) that I do not think I will miss many present tense ones that I have passed over.
No comments:
Post a Comment