The Cautioner's Tale - Genre Blending/Visual Keywords

In thinking about what to write about for this blog post, I found myself considering what the genre of The Cautioner's Tale is. Yes, it has the elements for mystery so it's understandable why it would be considered so, yet R.M. Wilburn is not subtle in the slightest about what events this story set in the future alludes to despite the elements of sci-fi (timerox/time travel). So, here I sit thinking about how these genres impact the arc when coupled with the epistolary form in which the story is presented. This brought me to the epigraph, “The Dying Man” by Anonymous Penn in the year 2046 AD as well as the other objects and writing on the page.

Each of these objects lends itself to the genre of mystery as, at the outset, they appear to be random objects (a diner receipt, loose nuts, a puzzle piece, buttons, etc) which could be easily glanced over by readers unfamiliar with the epistolary and graphic novel forms only to find as you continue to read that these are the things which leads to the truth of the events which have taken place and are the visual representation of key words within the narrative. That being said, the physical representation of each of these objects gives each of them far more narrative power than if they were each described in turn. Even moreso, their placement on the title page next the poem describing the economic state of the world (the streets “burdened w/ starving crowds” and “jobs [...] promised are overdue”), the political (“we were bamboozled by a rigged election”), and the social (“our needs are many, but our choices are few”) creates a feeling of dystopia right off the bat. All of these statements give the reader clues about the setting in which the story takes place and compliments the demands the form places on the reader. While the form gives us an experience which is very close to the action of the narrative, it also demands that the reader trust our narrator and what is being told to us and don’t question the laws of the world we’re dropped into. Because of this, when Mary Morgan begins to tell us about timerox and time travel, we as the reader have to accept that this is something which is possible in the future world in which she lives rather than question if this is possible or realistic which is a hurdle often encountered when reading a novel in the traditional narrative form.

All this being said, I think that the genre blending which occurs here benefits from the graphic form in terms of arc overall by creating a more interactive piece as a whole and mimics the mind of Mary Morgan herself (and most writers, if I may be so bold to claim so). While most mysteries are laid out in a certain way in terms of arc (event which requires investigation, clues and investigation, accusation of culprit, etc), the form here bends this rule only slightly. On the whole, rather than a clue being revealed to the reader and MM as the narrative progresses, we are given almost all of the clues right away on the title page. Looking back, all the the pieces are there on that first page, but it’s not until we encounter the objects in the context of the journal that they begin to make sense such as how Rump wants everyone to “button their lips” and this phrase is repeated while buttons are being sent to MM. More often than not, phrases and ideas have to be repeated multiple times before they begin to impress themselves into the mind of a person and we can begin to piece it together with other information we have been given much as how while the phrase “button your lip” was repeated several times, Mary Morgan and myself did not figure out the connection to the buttons being sent to her until after several repetitions of the phrase which lends itself to the limited scope the form gives us while also playing into how the events are allowed to play out in the genres being blended.