The De Granville Files part of the story is narrated by Granville himself in first person, but in the past tense. This means that he is telling us his story from a point in the future. Some parts of the text, however, are written in the present tense. These are the dialogues, which are obviously reenacted as if they were happening again; and other parts in which Granville makes reflections about something that can be somehow connected to the main story, but that is usually not a part of it.
During this chapter we can find numerous time references regarding specific time periods. For example, in the section A Sort of Beginning there is the word Tuesday. This suggests that the narrator is indeed in the future, but not as distant as to be aware the ending of the story. It feels like a sort of diary, especially having in mind the reflecions in the present tense. This idea is reinforced in sections such as Who I am, which seem to have been implemented with the purpose of clarifying who the narrator and protagonist of the story is. It is written in the present tense completely:
You’ve probably heard of me. My name is Crockford de Granville, and I like to muse. Musing is what I’m good at. It’s why I get paid the big bucks, why the media always call on me. I speak off the top of my head. The top of my head is the most valuable real estate in the celebrity world.
Musing makes me a celebrity. I say interesting, provocative things. I shmooze with the idea men, the movers and bakers, the other celebrities, famous mostly for being famous, although a few of them have actually done something — invented a new technology or made a lot of money. I discovered musing was more lucrative, more fun, and considerably less work than business, at which I was not much good.
Did I mention I am also relentlessly honest?
Musing is who I am. I don’t do anything else. Speaking well is the best revenge, and I charge a lot.
So, I won’t pretend any false modesty about this, I’m famous and I intend to stay that way. (section Who I am)The only sentence that does not make use of the present tense is Did I mention I am also relentlessly honest?, but in my opinion this is a rhetorical question that does not make any specific time reference, and if it did, its range would be limited to this paragraph.
During this Granville's first PART of the text there is an interest in the future from the general public, in section Trouble:
"Well, this week the population’s falling. Scientists expect a crash in thirty years, more or less."
Apart from the reference to the future, it is interesting the use of the phrase 'this week', which denotes repetition and continuous change, like lessening the credibility of the affirmation that follows.
A recurring statement all over Granville's narration is this one:
"No, Sheila, this is the twenty-first century. We do not do Divine Intervention any longer."
This, I think, is a double-edged statement, as on one hand it objectively clears us the almost precise moment in time in which the story develops, but the intention of the whole sentence evidences something else. It feels as if they were not living in the present, but in the future.
In this chapter there are also several references to the recent past as well, all of them with the purpose of adding background to the story.
A course change was appropriate, however, and a new funding model reached optimization by the end of the 20th century.
There was a period in the 20th century when the World Wide Web was sometimes referred to as "world without wisdom." (section Tabloids)
