Pieces for the Left Hand

by J. Robert Lennon

A student’s suicide note is not what it seems. A high school football rivalry turns absurd—and deadly. A much-loved cat seems to have been a different animal all along. A pair of identical twins aren’t identical at all—or even related. A man finds his own yellowed birth announcement inside a bureau bought at auction. Set in a small upstate New York town, told in a conversational style, Pieces for the Left Hand is a stream of a hundred anecdotes, none much longer than a page. At once funny, bizarre, familiar, and disturbing, these deceptively straightforward tales nevertheless shock and amaze through uncanny coincidence, tragic misunderstanding, strange occurrence, or sudden insight. Unposted letters, unexpected visitors, false memories—in J. Robert Lennon’s vision of America, these are the things that decide our fate. Wry and deadpan, powerful and philosophical, these addictive little tales reveal the everyday world as a strange and eerie place.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Humor, Literary Fiction, School, Anthologies, American

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

J. Robert Lennon is the author of three story collections and ten novels, and is co-editor of CRITICAL HITS, an anthology of writing on video games. He lives in Ithaca, New York.

Reviews

[ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very short stories that read somewhere between reportage and urban legend. They are delivered so simply, they would be boring if it were not for the strange holes they seem to poke into the fabric of the very day life. I haven't read any of his other books, but it seems Lennon gets criticize often for not sustaining the reader's interest in his novels.

This is not the case with this these short stories.
Part of the trouble I have with reading fiction, and especially short stories is that they ask so much empathy and input from the reader in exchange for such a short or undeveloped plot. There are authors who spend so much energy building a meaningful character and not as much time thinking about what the arc and chain of events of the story means; the characters come off as heavy, pasty, and made up and you feel tired by the end of the book from having to follow the author rather than read him.

Lennon doesn't build characters, as much as elegant sketches of situations, events, recollections, and happenings that quietly speak volumes about the nature of modern domesticity, success, community, and hope. The form of his stories are short, but precise and well thought out, because they are written like a third-page newspaper article, an email, a telephone conversation, they have a lightness and unique unsuspecting beauty.

I do hope he writes more short stories.

[Ted · Rating 3 out of 5]

The little stories are, overall, interesting — I’m glad to have read the book. I had hoped that, in the assortment of anecdotes, I would find an array of nuggets, moods, insights, grins, etc.; but, the more I read, the more I saw an uncomfortable pattern or theme.

There are a few (a very few) that were worth a smile or an “aha” and many fell into a category of “unremarkable” (just everyday slices of life). However, the majority were permeated with malaise and melancholy. The stories are predominately tragedies filled with misunderstanding, misrepresentations, lost opportunities, lost loves, lost minds, lost lives. Perhaps this is a result of the life circumstances the author describes in the introduction.

So, an interesting read, but be warned.

[Michelle Only Wants to Read · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection of short-stories is mesmerizing. I had a hard time putting it down because I wanted to keep reading it. My favorite sections were Parents and Children, Lies and Blame, and Artists and Professors. Some of the stories I enjoyed the most were Leaves, Switch, and Directions.

In the prologue, the author states how some stories may or may not be real (even when embellished), and some others are just the product of his imagination. As I turned the pages I kept wondering which ones were based on real events. Having heard my own share of bizarre weird-but-true stories, it was easy to believe they all could potentially be real.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book of 100 vignettes centered around the author's life in upstate New York. Some are true, while others are small town lore or fable. There's a mix of hope, love, grief, and loss in these. My experience while reading this was like binge reading 100 vignettes from Reader's Digest. While well written, I think it best not to binge read these. If I had to do it again, I would read no more than 10 in a day, then leave it for about 24 hours, then come back to it. I don't regret the time spent reading it, I would just not binge read it. For lovers of brief snippets of slice of life fiction.

[Dusty · Rating 3 out of 5]

I talk about this book in the new episode of the LitWit podcast series, so I'll keep this written review short. I've known about this book since about 2006, when I ran across selections from it in one of the Best American Short Stories anthologies I was rolling through at the time. It is comprised of anecdotes--some real, some made up, but you'll have a hard time telling which is which--relating to the author's life in upstate New York. What impressed me about the selection I read several years ago is the author's ability to not only convey, but also wring poignant human truths from, simple everyday experiences. Maybe my problem with the book is that it is one hundred anecdotes instead of just five or ten. After a while, they start running together and feeling rather more measured than spontaneous--and spontaneity is part of what I think characterizes the anecdote. Technically, the book is well-written, and I would be interested to read one of Lennon's novels.

[Kirsten · Rating 5 out of 5]

[2005] Anecdotes? Flash fiction? Micro-stories? I’m not sure what the difference is but whatever you call it, I loved it. Each story no more than a page or two long but felt completely complete. Like poetry, each word seemed carefully chosen and perfect. The writing was super clear and concise, but also rich and interesting. A single sentence would say a lot but never felt overstuffed or cluttered. You got the story itself and what the narrator thought about it, the characters were all well developed so you knew who you were dealing with. Loved the, sometimes dark, humor. And each one had a real ending! That’s often my problem with short stories, that they have unsatisfying or nonexistent endings, but that was not a problem here. More twists and turns in each than I would have thought possible in a page or two. Spread out my reading of them so I wouldn’t burn out, which I think added to my enjoyment. I’m just really impressed with what he could do with so few words. Reminded me a little of George Saunders if he wrote flash fiction.

[Leanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a keeper. Quirky short short stories that are all over the place in every way but geographical. It can be hard to remember that the book is basically fiction (but you should, to be fair to the author- I am sure, or at least fervently hope, that some of the less...savory... stories are made up).

As a bonus, there are flip book pictures of a man walking on the bottom right of the pages so you can entertain yourself with a little movie sometimes. (the author started telling himself these stories on long walks)

[Marjorie Hogan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book of (very) short stories. Each one thought-provoking, intense, often surprising with understatement as technique. I did not want this book to end!! Highly recommend.

[Jim Coughenour · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book of almost pure delight. I read it straight through, being one of those obnoxious readers in the corner of a cafe giggling helplessly to himself. It would be hard to pick a favorite of Lennon’s anecdotes, but I’d pick “Lucid Dreaming.” That one is almost worthy of Saki’s “Laura.”

Another reviewer pointed out the resemblance to Paul Auster’s The Red Notebook: True Stories. Auster’s small book of coincidences is more mysterious, and Auster is a marvelous writer. Lennon’s stories are closer to an adult version of the column “Life in these United States” that I used to read in my grandmother’s copies of Readers Digest. I mean that as high praise. These pieces are mordant merriment, perfect for that little shelf in the bathroom when you only have a few minutes to read. This is also high praise, but probably I should stop trying.

[Chris Shaffer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Combining the poetic deftness of Kawabata's Palm of the Hand stories and Paul Auster's bizarre and coincidental true stories from the Red Notebook, Lennon's flash fictions are overwhelmingly satisfying little gems. Each story ranges from half a page to a page and a half and, like a well told joke, they all contain an element of surprise. After reading each story I wanted to find the closest person and recount what I had read. They are that good. This would be the perfect book to keep next to your bed before you go to sleep, or to keep in the bathroom...

I picked this up to get a taste of Lennon's writing style and now I want to read everything he's ever written. There's something in this book for everyone--just flip it open, read a story, and you'll see what I mean.

[Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

The ideal high-lit bathroom book! Flash-fictionistas better be aware of this one as a model of the form's strongest suit. Fabulist-realist tragihumor, semi-Kafka, semi-Auster, semi-Brothers Grimm? Almost every one of the 100 anecdotes (none longer than 3 pages) ends with a percussive laugh (despite never being "jokey") as pressure created through the first few paragraphs is released at the end. Absolutely clear prose, good-natured, steady, mature. Loved it -- essentially -- merits fifth star for uniqueness, plus the perception-enhancing sense that life's long and tremendous. Didn't know that Mr. Lennon was such a badass. Definitely will read more of his stuff.

[Janelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lennon writes with a psychological humour that will horrify you. His neutral prose is wickedly funny yet incisive, cutting to the heart of what makes us human with the ease of a modern day Steinbeck. His words scan our eyes, spitting out tickets that are a measure of our selves and slide them under our bedroom doors while we sleep. These anecdotes, dark or light, are savoury, peppered with shared experiences, of neighbours or fathers or friends, that straddle the border of urban-strange so comfortably, the reality of each anecdote is unquestioned. A real tasty read.

[Robert Wechsler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very short stories that very logically deal with illogical circumstances. Sometimes the writing is very much like Jeffrey Shaffer's, sometimes more like Italo Calvino’s in Invisible Cities. The combination of one voice and a wide variety of content was wonderful to behold.

[Jim · Rating 1 out of 5]

Almost every anecdote is essentially the same: long, flowing sentences for a page and half, then two short ones to reveal some simplistic, unclever irony. Lennon comes off as a pretentious writer when really his stories are reminiscent of when you're cornered at a party by the guy who incessantly keeps telling you stories about nothing that go no where. None of these were anecdotes worth telling. Trite and banal "story telling." Very disappointing.

[Sam Price · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book blew me away. Lennon fits so much into these small stories. I read it in 3 sittings and ended up late to places all 3 times because I kept saying, One more, one more, one more.

[Eilish · Rating 2 out of 5]

A quick read, some of the very short anecdotes ( most less than a page long) were intriguing or thought provoking, but most just seemed like small-town folklore or mild coincidences.

Ones I liked

*Indirect Path
For many years a large table stood in the center of our dining room, blocking the most direct path from the living room to the kitchen and necessitating the development of an angled walking route that, over time, came to be visible as an area of wear in the dining-room rug.
Recently we discarded the old rug and, since our children have grown and moved away and we now eat our meals in the kitchen, transferred our large table into storage. The dining room has been turned into a study, with bookshelves lining the walls and a narrow desk facing the front window.
Despite these changes, we find it nearly impossible to take the newly created direct path through the room, and continue to walk around the edge as if the table were still there. When occasionally one of us must enter the forbidden space, either to sweep the floor or to pick up a dropped item, we find that we wince in discomfort, as if anticipating a painful crash into the missing table.

* Intruder
When we came home, I sensed a difference in the house. A book t had been reading on the sofa now lay on the kitchen table. There was the smell of a candle lit, then blown out. A bottle of beer I'd finished drinking but left on the desk was now standing in the sink.
My instinct was that there had been an intruder. But I dismissed the possibility: we had not been gone long, and those items that had been upset were not the sort of things that would have interested an intruder. More likely, I had upset them myself and forgotten.
But in that case, there had been an intruder after all: the version of me that had done these things. Or perhaps the real intruder was the version of me that noticed the change. This made more sense, since the house as it was belonged to the version of me that had made it so, and the version of me that did not recognize it was a
stranger.
The difference was that the intruder would take up permanent residence in the house, and its true owner would never return. Then it must be so, because I am still here.


* Tea
in the years after my father died, my mother took to a certain brand of tea, which she drank four times daily, once at breakfast, twice in midafternoon and once in the evening, after dinner. She drank it with milk and honey, though sometimes I saw her use granulated sugar, when the honey ran out.
This particular tea came in boxes of fifty bags, and every box came with a small pastel-colored ceramic circus figurine. It was a kind of promotion: I believe the tea was called Piccadilly Circus, and there were fifteen different figurines, a lion tamer, an acrobat, a human cannonball. Every once in a while I would be around when my mother unwrapped a new box and took out the figurine. It would sit on the table between us while we drank and sometimes she would pick it up and turn it over in her hand.
When my mother died and my sister and I sorted through her possessions, we found, in the back of the cellar, a pile of shoeboxes with numbers written on the top: 80, 100, 75. When we opened them we found the figurines. The numbers on top corresponded to the number of figurines inside.
It wasn't like our mother to keep things; she was no pack rat.
Because of this it seemed right to take out the figurines and count them, which we did. There were 420. Sitting there in the dusty cellar, I calculated: fifty tea bags times 420 boxes of tea was 21,000 cups. I cach cup held about eight ounces of tea, that made 168,000 ounces, which divided by 128 ounces per gallon was more than 1,300 gallons of tea. In my head I expressed this in fifty gallon drums, about twenty. five of them, stacked up in a big pyramid, and I pictured them stored out in the wind and cold on a cement lot, in back of an airport or warehouse somewhere, behind a tall chain-link fence.
It occurred to me that this was a measure of loneliness, all the tea my mother drank during the twelve years between my father's death and her own. I wondered if she herself thought of it that way. In any event, when I am lonely, it is the pyramid of fifty-gallon drums that I think of, standing in a light snowstorm, with perhaps a little creamy brown tea leaking from the bottom of one of the drums and frozen into a dull, irregular pattern on the pavement below.

[Julio Rainion · Rating 5 out of 5]

I borrowed Pieces for the Left Hand from my professor; I’m frankly glad I did, because it wasn’t the type of stories I’d usually read. Half-pages of weird anecdotes by someone from (ew) CNY? I never thought it would be something I’d enjoy. But I did, and it makes me want to write a book like it some day.
The pieces inside lull you into the quiet life of a college town, spoken to you like a grandfather reading a story to his grandchildren. Each one is mildly different, but spoken conversationally all the same. They are grounded, have a beginning and end, no matter how strange those endings may be. The stilted protagonist burning a book and a letter belonging to his neighbor, because that neighbor never returned a belt sander of his; him speaking of a family heirloom that he still keeps locked inside a storage shed. So many more anecdotes are inside.
It isn’t your typical novel. It’s a collection of small tales within a small stretch of Central New York; there’s no overarching plot, and the most recurrent character is the main man himself. It’s a cozy read that helps to make you think. Or not at all, if that’s more your thing. They’re organized into different sections, something and other, but overall? They hardly relate. And, honestly, that’s what keeps me coming back to read it again and again.

[Frank · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an incredible, unique story collection! I'd never heard of the author, but my short-story-writer son loaned this to me, thinking I'd enjoy it. I think I can actually say that I've never read a book quite like this before - the format and style is very different from other story collections. The author calls them "anecdotes," which is an apt phrase for the super-short pieces. I especially enjoyed the first few sections ("Town and Country" through "Work and Money") more than the latter ones, perhaps because as a reader, I became more accustomed to the style by the time I was halfway through, and not so amazed by its uniqueness. Also, I thought the first few sections had more dark humor, whereas the last few were largely just dark. But excellent tiny stories throughout, and the writing is imaginative and almost flawless. Many times I'd finish a piece and think "Holy crap! THAT IS CRAZY!" And a moment later, I'd realize, "Yep. That certainly could happen (and probably did)." The world truly is an odd and eerie place. Wow!

[Neil Griffin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a short, thoughtful, sometimes hilarious book that I definitely recommend. It reminds me of Charles Reznikoff's short prose poems in Testimony, where Reznikoff would repurpose ghastly articles in newspapers from early America into terse, bizarre, mostly violent narratives told over a page or so. These stories accumulate into something much bigger than the sum of their parts.

For Lennon, his stories seem to emanate from his meandering imagination as he concocts tales while walking in upstate New York and are all focused around his small University town. Like Reznikoff, they are 1-2 pages, but where there is violence in Reznikoff there is alienation, humor, and nostalgia in Lennon's wonderful book.

It's a pleasure to read on a sentence level and is a book I wish I had either read all in one sitting or had spread out over a few weeks with reading a few before going to bed. In any case, Reznikoff or no Reznikoff, this book slaps and you should probably read it right now.

[Matt Sautman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked up Pieces for the Left Hand throughout this past summer to satisfy my desire for quality Flash writing. Lennon' work is phenomenal. The pieces work both in isolation and in tandem to create a narrative comprised entirely out of anecdotes. While this quality alone makes the book charming, what I find most endearing is how each piece of Flash seems to reflect a poststructuralist view of the world. In this way, Pieces for the Left Hand is as philosophical as it is well-written. This is amongst my favorite books I have read this year.

[Vincent Hernot · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've now read this one at least 3 times all told, over many different sessions.
The style is what it is: slightly distant, a bit formal, and it suits the ideas.
There's some repetition (of ideas, themes, atmospheres) but that's not meant in a negative way, on the contrary.
It's a treasure-chest of great stories, great ideas: the stories are great for the ideas they identify, the questions they raise - they're not great stories in themselves, for themselves as text as all of them are very to very very short.
Those stories are tools for thinking, food for the brain.
Can't be missed.

[Johan Kwok · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's funny how the style is incredibly dry, so there are times where I really don't know if he's being ironic or not. The humor is definitely there, though.

The theme of human hypocrisy or imperfection is strong, although some stories are not completely believable. Could people really act or react like that in real life? Also, makes me question if there have been instances where I acted similarly to the characters and didn't even notice, since he describes messed up shit like it's the most natural thing.

The occasional non sequitur endings though.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic collection of VERY short stories that are loosely organized into 7 broad themes. It's astounding how many of these are thought provoking, entertaining, and successful at setting a scene and articulating characters. The fact that the stories are only a couple pages long makes it both more impressive and also a form that suits how I read well, and it's the perfect book for me on my current quest to "get into" reading. This is a book I could see myself reading multiple times, which is saying something!

[Lunetune · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very amusing and insightful, and not at all a bother to read. It only took me so long because I was distracted by other books, and because the stories were so bite-sized. My personal favorite was "Money Isn't Everything". I would highly recommend this book. I dare say that it's a new favorite of mine, at least in terms of anthologies. I thought about giving it four stars but decided that it was better than Courtney's War, to which I gave five stars. My rating (and review) should reflect that, no?

[Sam · Rating 2 out of 5]

Insgesamt zu unpersönlich und blutleer. J. Robert Lennon versteht sein Handwerk virtuos, es fehlt aber der letzte Schliff um die 100 Anekdoten für den Leser bedeutsam zu machen. Vielleicht liegt es auch einfach am Umfang, bissken Schwund is halt immer, ne. Bitte, (1) weniger, dafür längere Kurzgeschichten, mit (2) ausgereifteren namentlich bekannten Charakteren, dann würde ich dem Autor nochmal eine Chance geben.

[Darryl Ponicsan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Never a line of dialog, nor the name of anyone involved, consistently deadpan with an accumulative effect of wonder, insight, and even a twisted joy. The author teaches at Cornell, where I studied writing, and much of this is set around Ithaca, pleasantly familiar to me. Highly recommend. Unlike anything you've ever read.

["Greg Adkins" · Rating 4 out of 5]

According to Goodreads, it took me five years to read this book. Even if I read the stories collected here at a rate of one a week, I still would have been done with it in two.

The only explanation I can give is that while the stories themselves are extremely short, the space inbetween them somehow turned exceedingly long.

[quinnie · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 ⭐️
imagine if welcome to night vale wasn’t actually supernatural and took place in upstate new york and had many many many more depressed people whose lives serendipitously take a turn for the worse (better?? but not usually) before/after coming into contact with aforementioned upstate new york region

[Brooks · Rating 4 out of 5]

100 very short stories or anecdotes. Although, if you count the brief vinettes that begin each section and the introduction (which I would certainly count as a story), it's more like 108 stories.

These are lovely. None more than three pages. All somewhat delightfully quirky. These make for a wonderful snack between longer works. I often read three to six at a time.

[Allison · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the pull-quotes on the cover of this book calls its stories "literary canapes," which I think is apt. They are less stories, and more modern day parables. The ones I like most function as moral philosophy thought experiments.