Comparing Hookups Starve The Soul 'And' No One's A Mystery

“Fiction is the truth inside the lie.” - Stephen King. When people read fiction, it is to lose themselves in a different, make-believe world. They are not fooled into thinking that the fiction they read is real. However, fiction can be the source of real-life events. Laura Vanderkam’s Hookups Starve the Soul and Elizabeth Tallent’s short story, No One’s a Mystery do well to illustrate how much truth is really in fiction. Tallent’s story is about a young girl dating an older, married man and how they hide their affair from his wife. This a fictional short story, but there is more truth to it than most people read into. “He pushed me down onto the dirty floor of the pickup and kept one hand on my head while I inhaled the musk of his cigarettes..”(Tallent 98). When the married man sees his wife, he immediately hides his girlfriend so as not to be found out.

She is telling herself that “Jack” is her forever and they’re gonna have this great life, but they are not gonna work out. They are not gonna have two kids and get married and “Jack” is not gonna divorce his wife to be with his girlfriend. Vanderkam’s piece is about how more and more young adults are having meaningless hookups rather than dating. Her reasoning is that parents put so many rigid rules into their children’s lives that when they get to college they want to let loose and have fun (Vanderkam). When people hookup, they are taking pleasure in their biology, but what about their heart and their emotions? The lie in this piece is how people fool themselves into thinking they can be happy with just hookups and meaningless, one-night relationships. In the long run, they will begin to crave companionship. “Hookups do satisfy biology, but the emotional detachment doesn't satisfy the