Pieces for the Left Hand: Stories

This was a very interesting collection of microstories/anecdotes about situations and happenings around a fictitious town. As with most collections, some were great, some were good and some not so good. They were quirky, with sometimes an odd twilight zone twist, or just an abrupt end, like you would have in a random anecdote. I liked the book pretty well. My only ding, was that perhaps there were too many stories. Hard to keep them all straight. To give you a taste, here's the introductory story to one of the sections, called Doom and Madness.

When a local apartment fire claimed the lives of 37 people, I was shocked and appalled. Later, when several residents were discovered to have been out of town, and the number of dead was revised show more to 29, I was somewhat relieved. At the same time, I felt faintly betrayed and disappointed, and wished that my grief and sympathy for the 8 additional victims and their families had not gone to waste show less

Short stories again, although the subtitle of the book is "100 Anecdotes." Each of the anecdotes/stories is in the first person, and usually related from a great distance, so they feel very mythic, and each is at most a few pages long. In the intro, we are told that the narrator is 47 years old, and lives in a farmhouse near a college town in rural New York, and, "what he enjoys is being alone, telling himself stories," stories which are "ephemeral," and "protean." The stories are presented in thematic sections, and I thought I'd quote from one story from each thematic section (in some cases, the quote will in fact be the whole story):

Town and Country
"For more than a century the main street in our town was named after a founding father show more of our state, a man who in a recent revisionist essay was revealed to have been a corrupt, bigoted philanderer who beat his children and disliked dogs. After a string of protests disrupted rush hour traffic, our mayor took down the street signs and promised to rename the street. But loyalists protested the removal and the signs were restored. Further protests again eliminated the signs, and the battle has moved to the courts. Meanwhile, our town's main street has no name at all, confusing visitors, complicating deliveries, and making us the butt of vicious jollity from other, less volatile neighboring towns."

Mystery and Confusion
"Owing to the inefficiency of our plumbing, I am obliged not to wash the dishes while my wife is having a shower. And because we have only one telephone line, I am unable to make calls while my wife is corresponding via e-mail. Therefore, today when my wife was in the shower, I felt that I could not use the phone."

Lies and Blame
"A tree that grows on the property line between our land and our neighbor's land for years served as a playground for the children of both families and was happily considered a share asset, to be maintained and enjoyed by all. But recently the tree was uprooted during a storm, and crushed a passing car. The resulting law suit has led to a property dispute, a flood of certified letters, and the complete dissolution of our friendship."

Work and Money
"In the pocket of a pair of long-forgotten pants I was preparing for donation to Goodwill, I found a ten dollar bill. This pleased me until I realized that the bill was worth less than when I put it into my pocket many years ago. As a gift to my future self, and in a bet against inflation, I added a second ten dollar bill to the pocket and replaced the pants in the back of the closet."

Parents and Children
"When my wife was pregnant with each of our children, I imagined their future appearance and demeanor. It was young men that I imagined, but my wife gave birth to daughters. Today, when I see my grown daughters, I often have the strong but incorrect impression that I have someone I would like them to meet, and realize that it is the imaginary men I thought they might become to whom I want to introduce them, and with whom I believe they would really hit it off."

Artists and Professors
"Our friend, a sculptor, has told us that sculpture cannot be taught; rather it can only be experienced. Similarly, another friend, who is a writer, told us that it is impossible to teach anyone to write; the writer must learn by doing. Presented with the comments of the other, each insisted that only he himself was correct, the writer stating that sculpture was an elitist and wholly artificial endeavor, whose existence depended solely on its institutional perpetuation, and the sculptor insisting that writing, far from being a true art, was a purely academic exercise. Each man heads the department dedicated to his specific field at our local university."

Doom and Madness
"When a local apartment fire claimed the lives of 37 people, I was shocked and appalled. Later, when several residents were discovered to have been out of town, and the number of dead was revised to 29, I was somewhat relieved. At the same time, I felt faintly betrayed and disappointed, and wished that my grief and sympathy for the eight additional victims and their families had not gone to waste."

These samples should give you a taste of whether this would be something you would be interested in reading.

3 stars show less

This was the first book I read by J. Robert Lennon, and I absolutely loved it. I love short stories, and the stories in this collection are so great. I've since read many more of Lennon's books, and he's one of my favorite authors.

I thought originally that this was a work of non-fiction. As such, I read the anecdotes thinking, God, is this guy cruel. As a work of fiction, I feel somewhat better. It is 'unsettlingly brilliant' as depicted by Time Out (London) and quick to read. The writing is taut and engaging. However, given the somewhat cruel nature depicted, I would be unlikely to want to read anything by Robert J. Lennon again.

A pleasurable read, nothing pretentious or copy-cat about it though it could be argued I suppose that Lennon's voice wasn't thoroughly developed by my ears. I have no prior experience reading anything by J. Robert so I cannot compare this voice with any of his other ones, if he even has any. Nonetheless, terrific stories written rather mundanely, nothing flashy or extremely dark about them. Hard to say if many, if any, were all that believable, but the pleasure in reading them cannot be denied. I especially related to the anecdote "Fingers" on page 48 where he tells the story about a friend who as a child witnessed his father accidentally slipping on some boards in the basement while using a table saw resulting in the loss of two show more fingers. Turns out the story wasn't true even with the friend's vivid memory of it happening certainly for real. I have written about this sort of incident happening with me and my brothers when we get together and one of us recounts something that happened in our lives that none of us other brothers can recall either at all or remotely in the same way. show less

This is a collection of 100 very short stories, mostly set in a small town in the North East. None of the stories is much more than a page long, and they are written in a conversational manner. Many of the topics are prosaic, but there is a lot hidden in the stark language and seemingly innocuous topics. Oddly enough, my favorite story was about traffic patterns in a house and the removal of a dining room table.