Regarding the Present Continous

 

So I’ve said that the use of the continuous present is a cheap device to give a feeling of immediacy.  Its particularly blatant used throughout novels such as those of Hilary Mantel and our latest Booker prize winner Paul Lynch in ‘Prophet Song’.  Anthony Doerr uses it in ‘All the Light we cannot see’.  Besides being affected and monotonous what else is wrong with it?  I believe it is psychologically and epistemologically wrong creating a false picture

of human action.  First of all we do not act in a continuous stimulus response mode as though we were conditioned to do so.  Sometimes we do but not always.  In between bouts of habit there is considered action in which the past and its tense come into play.  The brain as Bergson would maintain is an organ of action and is guided by what has worked in the past; in short, memory and not pure perception is the key to response. Our language reflects this modality.  The future is attained by intention.  What will it mean doing this or that or do it differently or not do it at all.  We weigh our options against past error and success and altered situations.  The past perfect, the present perfect come into play and offer their counsel.  ‘I had considered at that point’ but it turned out that I was wrong and woe is me ‘I have done the same thing again’.  The elision of all those subtleties must impoverish the expression of  reality in a novel.

Look no one talks in the continuous present except the gangsters in Damon Ruynon’s short stories.  Leave it to them.

"Anyway, I finally mention the names of these parties to Judge Goldfobber, and furthermore I speak well of their reliability in a pinch, and of their nerve, although I cannot conscientiously recommend their tact, and Judge Goldfobber is greatly delighted, as he often hears of Harry the Horse, and Spanish John and Little Isadore. " (from 'Breach of Promise')