Palm-of-the-Hand Stories (FSG Classics)

It is somewhat difficult to categorize these very short stories by Nobel laureate Yasunari Kawabata. Some are funny tales of village life, some are tragic existential tales, many are about women. So many of the tales are about the roles of women, the relationships between women or between men and women that I would say that this is a central theme that Kawabata explores in these short works. However, the dream and dream imagery begins to play a greater role in the stories written later in Kawabata's career. Some don't seem to be short stories but are recollections, such as the story of delivering puppies at home. Often the stories tell of a pivotal event in the life of a person, usually a woman, who embarks upon a new direction after some new insight or event. The vulnerability of women in a male dominated world comes into most of the tales and highlights the paradox of how men become intoxicated by women but also are cruel and repressive to women. Another theme is that people become other people, especially the personalities and roles of deceased family members. Several stories tell of a sister not only taking on the roles but also the persona and tastes of a deceased sister.The stories are listed in chronological order and end with the superb longer work "Gleanings from Snow Country" an example of the highest level of short story writing. After reading it, I found I had goose bumps on my arms, and the story became even more rich and rewarding upon my second reading. Most all of the stories virtually beg for a second reading because Kawabata is a master in the unsaid, the implied, the hidden, the sensory impression.Another short story of incredible power is "Snow" where an elderly man checks into a hotel for 3 days to lay in bed and dream. Across from his bed is a hotel painting of snow and this cheap snow scene is the path for his unconscious to open and flow forth, which was the wise old man's initial goal. In three pages Kawabata is able to illustrate the relationship between the desire to fully know the self, human unconscious content, psychological projection, and the flow of the creative process.The stories are written over a period of 50 years. The final story was written prior to Kawabata's suicide. Death is a theme frequently explored in the stories and is treated very naturalistically, as an event in the life flow of a family or community. He tends to embed Death into the larger tale of the pattern of family life before and after the death.The work is minimalistic, poetic, and impressionistic with no attempts to over-explain or over-describe anything. He is far more minimalistic than Hemingway or Cormac McCarthy. The short stories integrate brief character study and situations and sensory impressions. Sight and blindness are especially emphasized. Each sentence is essential. The stories are both light in form and infinite in possibilities. Much is said with little.

Kawabata is the Nobel Literature winning author of Snow Country among other (novels and short stories). Throughout his amazing literary career, he was fond of writing very short 'palm of the hand' stories. These stories are all 1-3 pages in length, and this collection contains a good number of them (70 in this version, I'm not sure why other reviews mention 100 but perhaps they have a different copy than the one pictured here).For those people who want development and plot... be warned. These stories are brief and really don't have true short story development. Instead they are like little prose snippets. The language is wonderful and the stories are mostly very well translated, a tough job for a language as dissimilar to English as Japanese.These stories are all like a poem, they describe a moment, or a feeling. Often the characters are nameless, faceless, but you can really identify with them. A tall order for such short stories.I highly recommend this to folks who love short stories, poetry, or Japanese literature. It's a nice departure from the modern Japanese short fiction authors such as Murakami and Yoshimoto, and bears a little more similarity to Yukio Mishima including a (suspected in this case) suicide. But comparing him to any other author is a disservice since he is so unique. You can look at a couple of his stories here on the amazon 'Look Inside' just to see if you like it.***Note: I would read the novel 'Snow Country' before reading the final short story, as it is a condensed version of the novel.---------------------Also of note: beware the third party sellers offering 'new' copies. I returned one (was amazon Prime fulfillment) that was CLEARLY not new (pages creased, cover worn, large white sticker on cover, discolored page edges from thumbs...). So I then spent the extra $2.50 for the actual amazon copy and was very happy.---------------------Update: I also read his collection:  First Snow on Fuji  and highly recommend it. The stories are longer, up to 50 pages though they average around 20. A great midway point between Palm of the Hand Stories and his novels.

In the throes of my impassioned binge of the works of Nobel Prize winning Japanese writer, Yasunari Kawabata, I've just finished reading his collection of short short stories, Palm-of-the-Hand Stories. It should have come as no surprise in a writer of such Haiku-distilled prose that the works herein would amount to being my new favorites, such is there essence, their finely-honed perfection. There are literally dozens of stories in this slim volume, the longest being no more than 6 pages long, and they span his entire career, ending, in fact, with an extended excerpt from Snow Country. The earliest bunch come from the 1920's and take place in the Asakusa section just outside the Tokyo limits, an 'entertainment' neighborhood well-known at the time for its hedonist delights, a site subsequently celebrated in his early modernist novel, The Scarlet Gang of Asakusa, my very next stop on this epiphany traversal of his incredible work.

So many are so short, observations, perhaps notes by the author to enlarge upon, at a later time. It may appeal to some. It did not appeal to me. I do however admire almost all his novels.

Beautiful stories and wonderfully written. There is so much to take in, in the span of only a few hundred words per story. A must read.

Always a fan Kawabata and the concept of well-developed short stories. Kawabata would often write 50+ pages and then cut the stories down to 1-3 pages.

These shorts hold well-developed ideas. They are unique ideas with a definite international flair. Most represent new ways of focusing on situations. Easy to reread favorites and revisit Kawabata's perspectives.

One of the best short story collections I've encountered.... In fact it is going straight into my top five list. Achingly beautiful stories. Makes me wish I could write about beauty and beautiful incidents using beautiful prose this way. But why even try? Sometimes we need to relinquish our urge to jump in and take over and just be happy that someone else has done (or is doing) the beauty and the perfection on our behalf.Saying that these stories are "beautiful" doesn't mean that all of them are happy. Far from it. There is pain, loss, suffering here. Spanning a period of fifty years, the seventy stories in this book were written during a series of very turbulent times. The earlier stories are strongly connected to an older Japan of unique traditions and manners. As the book progresses, more modern attitudes creep in. Two stories date from the Second World War and are stark and desperate.In many stories the line that separates reality from dreams is blurred. There is even a ghost story in which a reunited dead couple take up residence inside a tree. Kawabata would write many of them in one year and then sometimes leave a gap of many years before writing another. The final story is the longest and is actually a condensed version of the opening of his novel Snow Country, a book I read last year. This condensed version is exquisite.Many of these stories will remain with me forever, I suspect...

The origin of flash fiction and mini stories all start here. Kawabata was the first and the doyen of Japanese minimal fiction. These stories are just superb.

gogogo

Unexplainably abrupt endings that make no sense.

Good