Reading Albert Camus's The Stranger and I found the following passage:
"As we ate, he started telling me his story"
I started wondering if there were other examples of simple past used with continuous actions and I found this example from Eric Holmes's Iraq: Providing hope:
"While we ate, [...]"
(1) With As/While in both cases, isn't the right choice "As we were eating"?
(2) In which instances is it possible and grammatically correct to use the simple past as opposed to the past continuous to express the Imperfect tense?
(3) In the cases where it is possible to use both forms, what is the difference between the two stylistically, i.e. what is the different perception between "As we ate" Vs. "As we were eating"?
