چکیده (انگلیسی):

In the New York Times Magazine of August 9, 1998, inside an article on
Raymond Carver, there is a facsimile of a manuscript page from Carver’s early story
“Fat.” In it, what appears below to be computer tracking of changes is actually
Gordon Lish’s editing hand, deleting words and stretches of text, replacing pronouns
with nouns, but most consistently, shifting from the past to the present tense.
…I hurry away to the kitchen and turn in the order to Rudy, who take it with
a face. …As I coame out of the kitchen, Mar go, I’ve told you about Margo, who
chases after Rudy. Rudy, she says to me, Who’s your fat friend? (Max, p.38)
Stripping the text, as has often been remarked, to its bare bones,the legendary
editor thus creates a new style simply by switching the past tense,the preferred tense
of traditional fiction, initially chosen by the author, to the present tense. Gordon Lish
gives Carver’s early stories a minimalist style, different from Carver’s later collections
of stories. The two styles have been discussed by critics from a psychological angle
correlated with biographical information, but whatever the explanation, the fact
remains that the early minimalist style has been created to a large extent by a skillful
editor, and the major change is the verb tense. Why did Lish feel th e tense switch
would make for a more effective narrative? What is there about the verb and verb
tense that an apparently simple tense switch can define a narrative style? And above
all, what can English fiction writers do with just two verb tenses at their disposal?