I already posted part of this page in progress, but I haven’t posted the whole page before, and now you get to see it with Jake’s colors. Enjoy!
(Click on the image for a bigger size).
Frustrated, horrified, frightened, dismayed, disgusted, appalled....
No worries, Dianne. We're all frustrated with the current situation. (Or I am, anyway.)
I apologize for my last comment. Trump's election is the fault of Trump voters and no one else (well, Putin,…
And thank you everyone who decided that Biden wasn't pure enough for you and stayed home: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/incoming-trump-team-is-asking-white-house-national-security-council-civil-servants-about-their-loyalty Incompetent NSC means…
_Railsea_ by China Mieville has ampersands as part of the story-- both text and symbolism. A genuinely weird surrealist novel.
Ooooooh! Pet Peeve!
That’ll disturb me every time.
Other than that, though, I really like it.
Can you be more specific, please?
(And, thanks!)
Shirt SLWAYS tucked in?
I always like seeing crowd shots in comics, just so I can go through and see what all the people are doing.
Aw, man!
The professional proofreader at Abrams is currently going over it, and would probably have caught that — but still, darn! Thanks for catching that, Charles!
“Right now” is in the present tense. “was” is past tense. The rest of the page is in present tense.
I know how you’re reading it and I’ll admit that I used to read it that way, too. But… it just isn’t right. Even understanding how you’re reading the sentence.
Jake,
Present continuous is used to describe the normal conditions in Hereville to emphasize that it is a modern community not an historical oddity. Narrative past tense is used to narrate the events of the story.
On this particular day (in the past), it was the girls’ lunch period.
On every day (continuing into the present and the future), girls and boys take different lunch periods.
It may look weird in isolation, but it works fine in context, and is not grammatically incorrect.
I love it. The crowd shot is great, I love the detail of the argument in the background. I can’t wait
I’m really not saying that it’s grammatically incorrect. It’s just a thing I find awkward & kind of irritating.
Ah, I was misreading “But… it just isn’t right.” to mean “that isn’t allowed grammatically” rather than “That displeases me aesthetically.” Can’t argue with taste.
Charles wrote:
I can’t help myself. The grammar geek in me needs to speak: There is no present continuous tense in the narrative boxes–I don’t know if that’s what they’re called; I just made that up. There are two tenses: simple present and simple past, and the simple present functions here–if I remember the terminology correctly–as what is called the “historical present:” present tense verbs used to describe past time; and if that’s the way it functions, there is no need to switch to the past to talk about it being the girls lunch period. The reader already knows that it’s all talking about past time.
None of which is to say anything about right or wrong. Writers break grammatical rules–or are grammatically inconsistent–all the time, and if this mixing of tenses is a quirk of the voice in Hereville, then it’s “right,” and if that what sounds “right” to Amp, then it’s right; but that rightness is not the same thing as grammatical correctness.
ETA: The form of the present continuous is the verb TO BE+ING. So: The girls are eating lunch right now; and it means they started before the present moment, have continued eating during the present moment and will still be eating when the present moment has passed. The whole question of how verb tenses structure time in a language is really fascinating to me. The whole question of how such a thing as the “historical present” can exist was once the subject of a long drunken conversation when I was getting my MA in applied linguistics.
Damn, I looked up present continuous, but misread what I skimmed. I do recall there being a term for this particular use of present tense, but damned if I can remember it.
Historical present for the whole thing would work, but historical present gives the wrong feel to the narration of the specific events (too action-y, this is happening right now! feeling). Historical past for the whole thing would work, but it gives the wrong feel to the description of life in Hereville (specifically because the reader may have a tendency to read conservative culture as historical rather than present).
Charles:
I read the old version of Hereville, though I don’t remember it well, and I am certainly not going to second guess Amp and others, including his editor(s), who have no doubt given this point a great deal of thought, but, in general, I think the issue is not whether or not one uses the historical past throughout a work, but how one negotiates the transition from that tense, which is inevitably the voice of a narrator who is not in the story, to that voice’s use of any other tense. (If that makes sense.) Taken in isolation, I don’t think it works on this page (and so I agree with Jake), but I realize I am reading this in isolation and, like I said, I would not second guess people who have read and re read and thought really deeply about the book as a whole.
Also, more grammar geekiness:
This would be the function of the simple present tense; it is sometimes what is called “habitual action.” So you got the function of the tense as it is used on the page correct; you just named the tense incorrectly.
Ampersand, I imagine you’ve spotted it, but just in case you haven’t…”In AHERVILLE, girls…” is what it says up on the screen.
Typos are such a pain, good luck, but it looks like you’ve (Abrams proof readers) have got plenty of time to find them all!
By the way, I love this scene and the no-two-girls-alike thing you’ve accomplished. Outstanding work and especially love the young woman in the foreground with the shaggy hair and big nose. Just another haimish girl in the crowd!
Aherville is correct. Hereville is a traslation of the Yiddish; Aherville is the legal name.
Yeah, this. I was thinking more about it last night and that’s the conclusion that I came to. If Amp is using that sort of grammar throughout, then it’s consistent it probably wouldn’t bother me. But, as Richard says, in isolation I find it jarring and it takes me out of the story and into noticing the grammar.
I suppose that starting a sentence with, “Too, …” isn’t strictly grammatically incorrect but I’ve always found that to make for terrible reading because my brain keeps saying, “Couldn’t you have started the sentence with ‘also,’ instead? Better yet, couldn’t you have found another way to write that?” I find the sentence I pointed out to have the same effect on me in the context of this page in isolation.
I am enjoying the conversation about grammatical tenses here. I’ve never learned the names of many parts of grammar so I am unable to speak about it properly. (For example, I can’t tell you which is the subject and which is the object in a sentence.) I am hopeful, though, that I’ll remember the names and meanings of the tenses brought up in this thread.
If you feel so inclined, I’d be interested in knowing more about how you researched the cultural aspects of the book.
Madonlin suggested that I change “it was” to “it’s,” thus letting people read it as either “it is” or “it was,” according to their individual preference. :-)
Chingona, my main method of research was that I read a lot of books. I read both nonfiction accounts of life in various Hasidic groups, and novels set in Hasidic groups, particularly those written by female authors who grew up in that culture but are now writing English-language novels.
Although a lot of books I read influenced “Hereville,” the single most useful book was Mystics, Mavericks, and Merrymakers: An Intimate Journey among Hasidic Girls by Stephanie Levine.
One can do it to attempt to call attention to something as awkward or old-fashioned.
I wish any of the books I’ve seen this in had been trying to do something like that. There are some authors (and I can’t recall who they are – I’m thinking of SF that I read well over 20 years ago) who start sentences with “Too, ” repeatedly. That may be why it’s become a sign of bad writing to me.
I really like your suggested change to the sentence that I pointed out to start all of this.
The “Houseplants of Gor” parody has a beautiful humorous use of “Too,”:
And thanks. :D
Mandolin, thanks for the clarification on my comment. Makes perfect sense.
All I can say about grammar is this:
There is no grammar rule that cannot be broken. Indeed, there is no grammar rule that should not, on occasion, be flouted.
Yes, the niceties of grammar should be observed. But being too wedded to perfect grammar can adversely affect the narrative voice. Remember, it’s Mirka who’s saying this, not Barry. And Mirka isn’t a grammarian. She’s a kid and a swordswoman.
And forcing Mirka’s grammar to be perfect is something up with which I will not put. If her grammar was perfect, her voice would be lost. Because normal human beings’ grammar isn’t perfect.