This minutely detailed examination of a supposedly small grammatical detail, the use of the present tense, opens up new perspectives on a founding myth of the aesthetics of modernity: the longing for presence. This collection approaches the issue by documenting how the present tense became dominant in the 20th century novel. The authors draw on perspectives in fiction theory and narratology to delineate facets of this fundamental shift in literary aesthetics from the past tense to the present.