Simultaneous narration: a closer look. Comments on a recent narrative phenomenon

Abstract

With this article we would like to discuss the narratological and linguistic implications of first-person, narrative fiction, which is exclusively or to a very large extent cast in the present tense. This form of narrative fiction is relatively recent and unacknowledged and known by terms such as First Person Present Tense (FPPT), or “simultaneous narration”.

In an ongoing dialogue with Dorrit Cohn's work on the subject, we investigate three different points: 1) that simultaneous narration can throw light on other first-person forms, bringing to the surface hitherto unseen parallels between retrospective first-person fiction and interior monologue; 2) that simultaneous narration involves possibilities for semantic enlargement of the present now and of subjectivity, a trait that is not however specific to the fictional forms; and 3) that the uniqueness and indeed strangeness of simultaneous narration has to do with a combination of the not fiction-specific possibilities for enlargement and a fiction-specific lack of narrative situation.

Keywords:

• narratology
• first-person account
• interior monologue
• retrospection
• Remarque
• Robbe-Grillet

Notes

¹ Nathalie Sarraute: Martereau (1953) is an example and also Alain Robbe-Grillet: La Jalousie (1957) which we will return to.

² As explained above, the uncertainty of the narrative status of the interior monologue has to do solely with the question of address, and not with the structure of events retold. The retold events of an interior monologue have narrative structure, but one's definition of narrative might have a receiver as a necessary element, thus leaving the fictive situation of the interior monologue outside the realm of narrative.

³ Among others by Stanzel, Booth and Hamburger.

⁴ A present phenomenon like Facebook self-presentation very often involves a person's simultaneous reports of his own actions.

⁵ The narrator even reflects upon this plasticity on a meta-level, as when he exclaims: “Vergehen Wochen – Monate – Jahre? Es sind nur Tage.” (ibid.: 136) or “In Wirklichkeit vergessen wir nichts. Solange wir hier im Felde sein müssen, sinken die Fronttage, wenn sie vorbei sind, wie Steine in uns hinunter, weil sie zu schwer sind, um sofort darüber nachdenken zu können. Täten wir es, sie würden uns hinterher erschlagen; denn so viel habe ich schon gemerkt: Das Grauen läßt sich ertragen, solange man sich einfach duckt; – aber es tötet, wenn man darüber nachdenkt.” (ibid.: 141). This blurring of time seems to be an inherent part of the front experience reported, and the narrator is able, in some situations, to grasp this reflectively.