Name that Genre! - "No One's a Mystery"

I think the genre is Realistic Fiction, but that just seems too simple. So I'm gonna define that genre a little differently than normal. Not only is it about people doing normal day things and not flying dragons in a magic land, but they are facing realistic situations. The unfortunate truth is, people do cheat on their spouses with younger people and I think it is extremely realistic that one of them is in a daydream about it. The girl thinks they will end up together, she says, "In a year I'll write,'Jack should be home any minute now. The table's set-my grandmother's linen and her old silver and yellow candles left over from the wedding."(247) She's being very unrealistic about the situation, but Jack is not. He's a downer but he's honest. He knows that in a year it'll be over because he knows he won't divorce his wife. So for me this is realistic fiction because the characters discuss a real life problem and have the dichotomy of realistic verses the daydreamer or "fiction" aspect.

I think there's something extra about this story that makes calls for a more specific genre than "realistic fiction". I call it "Truth". In realistic fiction, the story is something that Could happen, whereas in Truth its a story that would happen. If the couple ends up getting married and having a perfect family, then it would have been simply realistic fiction. The honest aspect, in the story, of the difference between what we wish for and what we know is true, makes the story become a true reality instead of 'kinda realistic'. 

Bill, you didn't post your reserved-for-yesterday opinion.

Genres create general expectations for texts. When I hear mystery, I expect a quest to find an answer. When I hear nonfiction, I expect an informative piece of text. When I hear sci-fi, I expect space ships and aliens. If I hear realistic fiction, I wouldn't think of anything like "No One's a Mystery." NOaM needs a genre of more specificity, because realistic fiction could hypothetically contain stories under love, mystery, adventure, etc. Because there is love in NOaM, I would place it under some form of love. But because it doesn't seem like the love in NOaM is true, honest love... I'd put an adjective in front of "love." False love? Conflicting love? Or how about foggy relationships. Whatever the genre's name is, it needs to refer to the relationships and the tension. 

I agree with Lacey in that "No One's a Mystery" is similar to "Our Town" because it's told from a kind of omniscient point of view and it shows a general trend and pattern that normalizes over time in a variety of cases of human nature. I was just doing my statistics homework and there's a principle that says that the variability of data points becomes less as more data points are added, and the data comes closer to the mean over time. This kind of reminds me of the perspectives on human nature presented in "Our Town" and "No One's a Mystery" which, to me, are similar in attitude. All of humankind, which obviously varies immensely much, can ultimately be narrowed down to one "mean", one "average" plotline that we all (or at least, the vast majority of us) seem to fit. The author takes that immensity of differences and trims it all down to one generalization. Because of this, I would say that "No One's a Mystery" is almost a formulaic work of literature, the mean of an immense number of human observations over time.

"No One's a Mystery" is a coming-of-age story, but it's also a love story. The central plot, like that of "Hills Like White Elephants," revolves around a couple who discuss problems caused by their two different philosophies regarding life, but another major factor in the story is age. The narrator holds a youthful, naive perspective regarding love. She dreams that John will suddenly decide to divorce his wife and marry her instead. Ironically, she believes wholeheartedly in his loyalty to her, even though he has already proven that he is disloyal by having an affair in the first place. Jack, with his older, pragmatic point of view regarding their relationship, points out the crippling fallacies in the narrator's idea of the future. For example, he observes that "[Eliza's] breath would smell like your milk [rather than vanilla], and it's kind of a bittersweet smell, if you want to know the truth" (247). The problem is that the narrator doesn't want to know the truth. She wants to believe in her fairytale future, even if it isn't practical or even possible. Jack forces her to grow up: he makes her see the future world as it almost certainly will be. This is another example of the "old age devouring youth" concept we touched on in class. Jack's mature cynicism confronts--and will eventually erode--the narrator's youthful optimism. The theme of coming of age features prominently in "No One's a Mystery" in the context of a romance.

Patrick brings up a good point -- this short story is difficult to classify into a specific genre because it is fits into two competing genres. Like the other story we read, "Happy Endings," this story does not have a definite ending. Instead, we are presented with options for endings: the narrator's proposed "happy ending" and Jack's more realistic, cynical ending. I think the reason we are jumping to label this as a coming-of-age story, despite the fact that we do not see the narrator lose her innocent nature, is because of our skepticism of so-called "happy endings" and our assumption that the biblical notion of a fall from innocence is inevitable. We also see this fall as inevitable because of Jack's seedy nature; after all, Jack pushes the narrator to the dirty floor of his pickup to avoid having his wife spot her -- this does not seem like a positive beginning to the relationship of which the narrator dreams. We assume that, as the title suggests, Jack and the narrator are not a mystery, and their future is already apparent even though we know nothing about them except for the brief glimpse of them we see from the story. But, is this story trying to definitively state that no one is a mystery, or is it trying to question that very assumption? We are faced with a zero ending, where we do not see the narrator mature or lose her optimism, yet we assume that she does. Do people naturally evolve to a state of cynicism as they mature, and is this cynicism necessarily any wiser? While I understand the idea that this is a coming-of-age story, the future of these characters after the ending is a mystery. What is not a mystery, however, is that the narrator is in love. Although this strays far from of typical notions of a love story, the story is about love and is narrated from the perspective of a woman who is deeply in love.

I have a hard time calling this a coming of age story. I see the logic, and I understand that perspective, but for me, when I think of a coming of age tale I think a more elaborate plot. This story is so short and the setting so static, and I'm not sure I see a fall of innocence in the girl. Yes there is a contrast between her idealistic, naive perspective of her and Jack's "relationship," but I'm not sure she has a stark and dramatic change of perspective after hearing his realistic words. She is disillusioned and hopeful, and less dynamic than the typical lead of a coming of age tale. So, I would argue that this story simply fits in the genre of romance.
I say this because of the great amount of dissonance between Jack and his mistress. This story comments on relationships, and they are a good depiction of two individuals who spend time together and "do stuff" vs. a shared relationship, as well as the complicated nature of love. It shows the difference between being invested in yourself (Jack's personality) and being invested in a another (Jack's "other girl"). "No One's a Mystery" shows the bitter-sweetness of hope, as the Jack's final statement touches upon.