Things are Getting Tense

The fierce fight over the present tense - Laura Miller - Salon.com: "It wouldn't be a Man Booker Prize shortlist without a controversy in the British press, but this year's furor -- launched by one-time Booker judge Philip Hensher -- may strike some readers as a bit wonkish. Hensher (author of the splendid novel, 'The Northern Clemency') complained in the Telegraph newspaper that three of the six nominees for Britain's most celebrated literary prize are written in the present tense, a choice he regards as merely, and annoyingly, 'fashionable.'"