Imperfect

Good day! Let’s get started.

(chairs scraping on a dry floor, murmurs from the audience, coughing) Mr. Speaker! Your exaltedness!

Call security.

Your Worship, why are you going to talk about imperfection? I thought this was supposed to be positive. Positive and woke.

If I may be allowed to begin. The sense I am using of the word imperfect describes a particular verb tense found more formally in the Romance languages—

Which nobody speaks, Mr. Pretentious Bully!

In English, imperfect comes from the Latin, imperfectus—unfinished, and the Greek, paratatikos—prolonged.

That’s what this is—prolonged. What’s the point, Walter? (Big Lebowski reference). Hey! Let go of me!

The imperfect verb tense in English refers to actions begun in the past that are on-going, in contrast to actions in the past that are concluded. An example is, “Always when my talk was interrupted, I became annoyed.” vs. “Today when that person interrupted me, I felt annoyance.” In English, these imperfect actions often describe an on-going state of being during which an action is completed. “I was beginning my talk when that person interrupted me.”

Famously, Marcel Proust made sophisticated use of the imperfect tense, beginning In Search of Lost Time by saying, “For a long time, I would go to bed early.”

Astute readers might note that this appears to refer to an action—going to bed early—that has concluded. However, it is in the imperfect tense because it describes this action as recurring over time.

(Muffled voice—what's the point?)

The point, Walter, or rather the question, is: does Susan Minot use the imperfect tense in Evening? Or more, accurately, when does she use it? —because I’m going to say it would be difficult to write a novel without using the imperfect tense.

We’ve talked about how the author of Evening uses different styles to indicate different time periods in the story and, yes, verb tense is an important component. At the book’s beginning, we have a long scene of Ann arriving at the Boston train station in 1954. The verb tenses are simple past, generally:

She lifted the yellow suitcase and banged it against her leg.

This describes actions the protagonist has done in the past (although the reader must hunt for exactly when these actions occurred). They are complete; she does not continuously lift the suitcase and bang it against her leg.

Ow!

By contrast, let’s look at the first passage in this first chapter:

A new lens passed over everything she saw, the shadows moved on the wall like skeletons handing things to each other. Her body was flung back over a thousand beds in a thousand other rooms. She was undergoing a revolution, she felt split open. In her mattress there beat the feather of a wild bird.

(Yes, the passage is italicized in the text).

Does this describe actions that are complete? I don’t think so, best B. It appears to describe a poetic state that the protagonist experiences on an on-going basis, a state whose emergence marks a significant change. There is, as of yet, no endpoint. The shadows move continuously on the wall, her body is flung again and again over a thousand beds in a thousand rooms. She feels split open, the feather of a wild bird beats in her mattress (it hasn’t stopped beating, she hasn’t stopped feeling split open).

To think about what effect this use of the imperfect has, let’s write it in simple past (apologies to Ms. Minot):

A new lens had passed over everything she had seen, there had been shadows that moved on the wall like skeletons that had handed things to each other.

‘Kay, sounds clunky, but I think the biggest difference is that this passage has a much different feel. As we read it, we are asked to imagine something done in the past instead of something on-going or recurring—not yet at an end.

It could be said that most of the scenes set in Evening’s present time are expressed in the imperfect tense. The present story has a dream-like quality that does not seem to be a story about real events, although much of it is. (Real fictional events, that is). There is a back-and-forth movement between sections that show scenes from the past that the narrator shows the reader vs. Ann’s inner state in the present.

Here’s an example:

This passage—He took her hand and they started across the field then turned down the dirt drive with the grass in a darker strip sprouting up the middle.

Vs.

She was being twisted this way and a man was twisting her there were hands and arms turning her and old stirrings and they were all echoes of the first strong one the time when all of her was there engaged…

Please note that the narrator is still actively showing the italicized scene, but the scene is intensely subjective, and it is challenging for the reader to understand what’s happening. My interpretation is that Ann is in the present and being moved around in the bed by the nurse but associates this with sexual experiences in the past.

The scenes that show conversations between Ann and an imaginary Harris have an immediate quality and one that is ongoing despite their representing discrete events.

Ask me again.

What?

To look at you.

What do you mean?

The way you did.

He was silent for a while. I’m not sure I can go back that far. Can we? It wouldn’t be the same.

That’s right, she said. I have it here. She closed her eyes and knocked her fist on her breast.

Please remember that this conversation occurs in Ann’s head. There is an illusion that it is a real conversation being shown but it is imaginary. Harris is not present. It's an illusion of an illusion. These scenes express an imperfect, continuous mood that has no resolution till the book’s end.

Till next time.

#Evening #SusanMinot #AlanBray