I’ve had three copies of Yasunari Kawabata‘s wonderful Palm of the Hand Stories since 1988 and all three (one hardcover, two paperback) have vanished. Well, I gave two away and the third one vanished during a move and I never got around to replacing it. So when I saw this hardcover copy for under two dollars last week on eBay it was go time. No, not “Go” time – I’ve never learned to play that classic strategy game… oh, you know what I mean. Anyway, I’m happy it’s back in my possession and nope, you can’t borrow it. Pick up your own somewhere and dive in. Kawabata’s short stories are lovely little slices of life’s moments and at 238 pages, it’s a pretty quick read you’ll go back to time and again. And before you ask why it’s called “Palm of the Hand Stories”, get your mind out of that gutter and consider that they’re all only a few pages long, silly. Anyway, that’s my recommend for the week. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some catching up with a few old friends to do…
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Everything I’ve got on my reading list at the moment is heavy. I’m looking for something someone is excited about. If I can find this someplace, I’ll check it out.
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I think you’d like this one a lot. The stories are short enough to zip through, but they tend to linger a bit because Kawabata packs a lot into a handful of pages (most are about three or four pages long, some are two).
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It takes real skill to weave stories that short, that powerful. So very hard.
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SO true. Kawabata even has (wait for it…) ONE page stories here and I still get knocked flat by how well he did those (back in 1924!). I love that some are sad, some are funny, some are strange, sexy in an odd manner and so forth and so on.
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