Nothing Happened and Then It Did: A Chronicle in Fact and Fiction (review)

This first book by a brilliant young writer may help us all see literature differently. It is also a perfect choice for those searching for a creative writing text. Silverstein weaves a magical spell between alternating chapters labeled either “fact” or “fiction.” Chapter 1 introduces Silverstein as a naïve young journalist in the small town of Marfa, Texas, working for The Big Bend Sentinel (fact); from there, he chases a story of severe drought that he imagines will surely result in his first Pulitzer Prize (fiction); then on to a strange poetry contest in Reno, Nevada (fact), a successful treasure hunt (fiction), the first McDonald’s in Zacatecas (fact), and back and forth across the Texas/Mexico border several more times.

Silverstein is a master at both fiction and nonfiction: his facts are hard to believe; by contrast, his fiction is believable. Characters in the fiction chapters challenge the journalist in the fact chapters. “You know what the problem is with journalists?” muses one. “You don’t have enough responsibility. You don’t realize that anything you say, any rumor you put in there, people will think that’s the truth. You can’t ever make them change their minds after they saw it in the paper” (168).

Wallace Stegner’s incorporation of Mary Hallock Foote’s writing began a heated debate about the role of nonfiction in fiction and vice versa. Some argue that writers are free to blend fact with fiction because in great literature, it doesn’t matter which is which. Silverstein argues that it absolutely does matter. Even a detail as seemingly unimportant as a wealthy Mexican American’s addiction to Thousand Island salad dressing can be critical to his political career if Mexican voters see it as a symbol of his Gringoization. In one nonfiction chapter, the young reporter is out hunting an overly sensational story about devils and witches in Redford, causing an old man to worry about the young man’s sanity. The old man probably suspects that the young reporter has heard too many wild stories about curanderos being witches and owls used as their familiars. So he offers the young reporter a cup of water (dehydration often causes hallucinations) and stresses reality over witchcraft: “An owl is a bird” (16). Silverstein juxtaposes exciting fictional accounts against boring facts, and the facts win every time.

The earnest young reporter’s inexperienced nose for a great story leads him down cold trails, dead ends, and wild goose chases. He finds what others have missed, but doesn’t recognize their importance. For his big story on drought, his fictional persona gets only a shrug from ranchers living in the arid West and their acceptance of aridity as simply a characteristic of the place they have chosen as home. Perhaps that nails what a drought means to ranchers living in the arid West, but such a brief story, the young reporter recognizes, won’t win him a Pulitzer. Though his fictionalized persona is trumped and embarrassed by a fictionalized reporter from The New Yorker time after time, Silverstein the writer turns out to be someone to ride the river with. His respectful representations of place, culture, and self are dead on.

The book is filled with hilarious small moments, as when an interview subject bends over to talk to the reporter’s notebook as if it were a tape recorder (fiction), when he counts snow globes on someone’s desk instead of paying attention to the boring local news (fact), or when he arms himself with a silly list of questions before an interview (fiction). Silverstein’s fictionalized self once tells a bellman, “I’m with The New Yorker,” when he is simply being paid to drive for the story’s photographer (35). The book is also full of serious moments such as when a fictionalized National Geographic fact-checker hopes writers will produce fodder for his “scorn for...