My summer is devoted to reading literature in the present tense. I have been asked to lecture next year on the stylistic and structural implications of novels being narrated in the present tense, so this summer I’m steeping myself in this style as practiced in English, supplemented with examples translated from German, Russian, and French. I’ll also be getting up to date on the relevant theoretical discussion in narratology and cognitive poetics.
Charles Dickens: Bleak House—1853
Virginia Woolf: Jacob’s Room --1922
William Faulkner: As I Lay Dying -- 1930
Samuel Beckett, Malone Dies --1951 (French), 1956 (English)
John Updike: Rabbit, Run—1960
Margaret Atwood: Surfacing--1972
Thomas Pynchon: Gravity’s Rainbow--1973
J M Coetzee: Waiting for the Barbarians –1980
Ian McEwan: Saturday--2005
Hilary Mantel: Wolf Hall--2009
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