force and significance to the task the narrator sets for herself and explicitly
articulates here: coming to terms with the period in which the two events
would have occurred and reflecting on that set of difficult issues. On balance,
then, the appropriate inference, regardless of whether the narrative is fictional
or nonfictional, is that on October 4, 2004, Quintana is still alive.
Now let us consider the passage in relation to the tacit assumptions under-
lying the reading of fiction. From this perspective, Didion’s treatment of Quin-
tana seems at best an unwise use of her novelist’s freedom and a worst a huge
mistake. If The Year of Magical Thinking is a novel about a woman’s effort to
come to terms with the sudden death of her husband after almost forty years
of marriage, then it ought to stay focused on her loss and her efforts to cope
with that loss. Giving the character narrator a daughter with a life-threatening
illness blurs the novel’s focus by introducing a second global instability, one
that also makes the narrative seem excessive in the tribulations it visits upon
its protagonist. Most editors, it’s fair to say, would advise Didion the novelist
to “lose the daughter.” Alternatively, if Didion insisted on keeping the daugh-
ter in the novel, then Didion ought to have the courage and the aesthetic sense
to kill her off before October 4, 2004. Such an event would allow the novel
to broaden its focus to the character narrator’s double loss and to her cor-
respondingly more extensive meditation on death, illness, marriage, parent-
hood, and mourning. But of course this strategy would require revising this
passage by making the daughter’s death part of the outline. Read as fiction,
the current passage, with its backgrounding of the daughter’s illness and its
implication that the daughter’s condition has improved by October 4, seems
to be deeply flawed.
If we approach the passage as nonfiction, however, then Didion’s decision
to include Quintana’s illness shifts from a matter of whether to a matter of
how—and the choice of how is very effective. Nonfiction’s ethical imperative
to be responsible to extratextual events means that Didion needs to include
Quintana’s situation. This constraint also means that if Quintana has improved
by October 4, then the narrative needs to reflect that extratextual reality. At
the same time, the ethical imperative leaves Didion free to determine whether
to foreground or background Quintana’s illness. And Didion’s decision to
background it makes good sense: John’s death, unlike the adult Quintana’s
illness and improvement, brings about a permanent change in Didion’s life,
and he had been her partner for almost forty years. Furthermore, the decision
gives Didion a clear focus for the narrative to follow. Quintana’s illness can
be, as it is in this passage, an important part of that narrative, something that
influences Didion’s experiences and her reflections, but it will always function
in relation to her effort to come to terms with John’s death.
PROBABILITY IN FICTION AND NONFICTION • 79