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face on his set, although we can’t expect his language to be lyrical, even when lyricism is called for.
    He loves her. She loves him. They whirl airily, stirring a light breeze, through a magical landscape of rose and emerald and deep blue. Her light brown hair coils and wisps softly in the breeze, and the soft folds of her white gown tug at her body and then float away. He smiles in a pulsing crescendo of sincerity and song.
    Now, perhaps (now?), we have been given a clue to the popularity of the present. Not only is the present brief, like a small bun to be swallowed on the run; those who live in the present, as we imagine cattle do, expect little from the future and remember nothing of the past. Any sense of continuity is quickly lost, for one present follows hard upon another the way a hard rain falls, and all those things that thicken the present with their reflective weight, that highlight (I hope I’ve mastered the word) one aspect and darken another, are omitted, because in the thin present what remains of the world is in the center ring, in full focus.
    “He loves her. She loves him.” How simple it sounds. How simpleminded it is. Not only is love itself complex; it never arrives unaccompanied, but brings its whole village, like a wagon of refugees. Even if we reduce love to a gesture, a look, a kiss, any bald statement of the case risks a smile if not a laugh. “He kisses her. She kisses him.” To be exact: he French-kisses her; she fish-kisses him.
    If the third-person present has the effect of a narrated film, or the antics of a woman in a window as described by Peeping Tom to Peepless Jerry (“What’s she doing now?” “She’s still mopping”), the first person is perfect for those who like to imagine themselves in a movie: see me mop. As in a daydream, the “I” projects its “me” into an unsuspecting world.
    If you are really passionate about the present tense, you can get it to play every temporal tune. Here is the way Raymond Carver starts a naturally brief piece called “Gazebo.”
    That morning she pours Teachers over my belly and licks it off. That afternoon she tries to jump out the window.
    I go, “Holly, this can’t continue. This has got to stop.”
    It is easy to understand how a snappy beginning like this would appeal to the students. “You should read R. Carver,” they’d say at those times when past their workshops I’d drift. So I did, and I was amused and edified. “Let me recommend Proust,” I’d say, just to share enthusiasms. Sure. “You should read T. Wolff,” they’d say—“where it’s at.” “Is that the brother of G. Wolff?” I’d wonder. “Dunno,” they’d say, “but T is tops.” Okay. And I was honestly edified and genuinely amused. Why imitate Proust? “Try R. Musil, won’t you?” I’d suggest. Sure thing. Someday. “Don’t miss J. McInerney. On all night.”
    You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning. But here you are, and you cannot say that the terrain is entirely unfamiliar, although the details are fuzzy. You are at a nightclub talking to a girl with a shaved head.
    The advantage to writing this slack is that the writer can’t hang himself with any length of it.
    What’s happening? “Me” is doing the talking. This is how it goes: “I” asks “me,” “What am I doing now?” and “me” answers, “You are seeing a pink in the linoleum you’ve never seen before, since the linoleum has never come this clean beneath your repeated mop.” I need never leave home. I am in heaven, in holy narcissism, in my present tense. I try again: “How about Colette?” “Hey, you’ve got to be—aren’t you?—kidding.” And the writing students hand me a list of a hundred authors each named Ann (or Anne) (or Mary Ann or Barbara Anne or Annie Ann). (Mann’s name has an Ann in it, I want to answer.) My enthusiasm wanes—for Musil, for Proust, for Literature. Number 42 of the
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