Present Tense

"Because flashbacks, summaries, and other techniques that allow us to manipulate the order and duration of time often destroy the illusion of presentness, most writers of present-tense fiction use them sparingly. . ."

ON THE OTHER HAND

"To the philosopher Mary Warnock, the principal consequence [of thesubordination of history] is the diminishment of the imagination. "The greatest enemy of imagination," she says," is to be locked in the present," for the imagination's primary purpose is to make connections between past,present, and future."

FROM Jauss' Remeberence of Things Present in the WRITER'S CHRONICAL (vol. 34, #5)