Past and Present

There’s a spat among Brits over the use of present tense in modern novels.

From Laura Miller in Salon:

What reasons do writers give for opting for the present tense? According to Hensher, they’ve been assured by “creative writing tutors” that it will make their writing “more vivid” and immediate. Philip Pullman — author of the bestselling series of young-adult novels “His Dark Materials” — also jumped into the fray in the pages of the Guardian, blaming an aversion to the past tense on the “timorous uncertainty” of “sensitive and artistic storytellers” afraid of the “politically dodgy” implications of seeming to know too much about their own story: “Who are we to say this happened and then that happened? Maybe it didn’t, perhaps we’re wrong, there are other points of view, truth is always provisional, knowledge is always partial, the narrator is always unreliable, and so on.” The idea that young writers are defaulting to present-tense narration out of a failure of nerve is not new. William Gass lamented this as a trend in the New York Times Book Review in 1987. He associated the device with McInerney, too, but also with women and the first person, invoking the old saw about female writers being less forceful and sure of themselves. Like Pullman, he saw the present tense as wishy-washy and qualified, a refusal to conclusively state what happened.

The idea that young writers are defaulting to present-tense narration out of a failure of nerve is not new. William Gass lamented this as a trend in the New York Times Book Review in 1987. He associated the device with McInerney, too, but also with women and the first person, invoking the old saw about female writers being less forceful and sure of themselves. Like Pullman, he saw the present tense as wishy-washy and qualified, a refusal to conclusively state what happened.

Is there truth in that? Is present tense “wishy-washy and qualified” and a refusal to conclusively state what happened?