"Palm-of-the-Hand" Stories by Alan Nicoll

Copyright 2001-2004 by Alan Nicoll, All Rights Reserved

A Palm of the Hand story is a fictional story, a "short short," written on one page. Beginning in 2001, I wrote these stories using opening lines from:

http://www.freehomepages.com/chaos/pool.html

I call them "palm-of-the-hand" stories because that is the name of a book of these stories written by Yasunari Kawabata, the only Japanese author ever to win the Nobel Prize for literature. The stories I wrote are all first drafts, but I liked them well enough to preserve them here.

Here are the stories so far. Numbers 22 and 30 are the most recent, written in 2004. Number 155 is pretty much everyone's favorite.

Opening Line #3: "When I stooped over to pick up my pencil..."
Opening Line #9: "They told me to fight for my rights."
Opening Line #11: "Your eyes betray you."
Opening Line #22: "She ignored the endless ringing of the phone..."
Opening Line #30: "We were the only ones on the beach..."
Opening Line #155: The parents had their child on a leash.
Opening Line #170: It wasn't the first time I had tried to build a time machine...

Yasunari Kawabata

Yasunari Kawabata is one of the first Japanese authors I ever read, and he has long remained my favorite of that nationality. He was born June 11, 1899 and died April 16, 1972. In 1968 he received the Nobel Prize for Literature, the only Japanese so honored.

Of his novels, I think Snow Country is my favorite. I also greatly like the novella, House of the Sleeping Beauties. His stories typically center on a thoughtful older man.

For more information, start with these links:

My email address is: alan_nicoll@yahoo.com

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