Compiled by Janet Hamilton
"Offerings" by Marlene Buono is a short story about a woman who learns to fold origami from apologies that she collects through life. (From the book Flash Fiction edited by James Thomas, Denise Thomas, Tom Hazuka, ISBN 0393308839)
From Rosanne Cash, "Bodies of Water", Hyperion, New York c. 1996, page 79: ". . . Just outside the door, with the afternoon light hitting his profile full on and making him seem incandescent in the shadow of the entrance, stood an old man with an upside-down gray felt hat outstretched in his hand. He did not nod or say a word, but looked directly in her eyes, a breath of a cautious smile on his lips. His skin was the color of butter in this light, with an oily sheen like the leaves of her roses. He was small, and as perfectly formed as an origami ornament, or the Pieta come to life. She wanted to touch him, but instead just nodded and dropped a few francs into his hat. She stepped fully into the sunlight and slowly began making her way toward St. Severin. When she turned around, he was gone. . . ." (ISBN 038072944X)
From Doug Coupland's book "Microserfs": "After lunch I drove down to 156th St to the Uwajima-Ya Japanese supermarket and bought Karla some seaweed and cucumber rolls. They also sell origami paper by the sheet there, so I threw in some cool coloured papers as an extra bonus... And she folded one of those origami birds for me. Her IQ must be about 800." (ISBN 0060987049)
"Blue Heaven" by Joe Keenan, page 69: "Gilbert blithely dismissed these concerns. He said Paris had told him plenty about Gunther and among the things he'd confided was that Gunther was all bark and no bite, a "paper tiger." I replied that I'd seen his fangs at close range and they hadn't looked like origami to me." (ISBN 0140107649)
This was an honorable mention in the Sept. 5, 1996 Sacramento News and Review's "Fiction 59" contest--for stories of 59 words or less. This excerpt from a story by Rhonda Thurlow:
"These are the best," she told the postal inspectors who arrived and found several thousand pounds of missing mail neatly folded into origami birds. "The wings flap," she'd said, demonstrating on an unemployment check swan.
Later people would whisper their mailcarrier had gone insane. That, of course, was inaccurate. Gone would suggest she'd started someplace else--someplace sane.
On p. 203 of "Missee Lee" by Arthur Ransome: (ISBN 0224606409):
Peggy folded the paper and cut it square with her scout knife. The she folded in the corners so that it became a smaller square. The she folded again. It turned into a hat, a double-ended boat, a salt cellar.
"Bother," said Peggy. "I've forgotten how."
"No, you haven't," said Nancy. "Go on. You fold and fold and then unfold and cut bits out."
"It's not a very good one," said Peggy a few minutes later.
"Engaged Elsewhere: Short Stories by Canadians Abroad" contains a story called "Origami" by Linda Svendsen. (ISBN 0919627374)
"Une page d'amour" by Emile Zola is apparently one of the novels in his cycle "Les Rougon-Macquart". Zola's novels are usually about the industrialization period in France in the 19th century, focusing especially on the social consequences. In one passage, Mr. Rambaud takes a newspaper from his pocket and tells Jeanne (his girlfriend and probably a prostitute) that he is going to make a coach for her. She stops talking about going into the room. She admires the way Mr. Rambaud can fold all kinds of things out of paper: 'cocottes' (the pajarita), boats, bishops' hats, carts, cages. But that day, his fingers tremble and he cannot do the details very well. He is listening to what is going on in the next room and is obviously nervous. Meanwhile, Jeanne is watching him folding and asks him for a 'cocotte' (also a child's word for a horse, here comes a wordplay on the two meanings of 'cocotte') to fasten to the coach. (Here there is a break). Then Jeanne is asking for a ('real') horse instead of a 'cocotte', but Mr. Rambaud tells her those are too difficult. After watching, Jeanne tries to fold things herself, but gets them wrong and loses patience, although she can already do the boats and the bishops' hats. But Mr. Rambaud keeps on explaining to her how to fold them. This is apparently a regular game between the two characters. (ISBN 2080702629)
French writer Georges Courteline "Messieurs Les Ronds-De-Cuir" is a satire about civil servants and bureaucrats, who were more or less represented as actually spending their time at work doing nothing except folding 'cocottes' (pajaritas), and that it was this caricature which made 'cocottes' such a well-known fold in France. (ISBN 0785929606)
There is an origami reference in Lois McMaster Bujold's "Memory", though I don't have any other details. (ISBN 0671877437)
G.K.Chesterton's "Manalive" of 1912, where "the hero, innocent Smith, on mock trial as a criminal lunatic, had been provided with pens and paper, out of the latter of which he made paper boats, paper darts, and paper dolls contentedly through the whole proceedings. He never spoke or even looked up…" (ISBN 0486414051)
The main character in "The Border", by Marina Fitch, is a folder, and the story somewhat revolves around this fact. She seems to have the ability to look into a person's soul and folds an appropriate model for them. (ISBN 0441005942)
In "Buddha's Little Finger", by Victor Pelevin (Title in Russian is Chapaev i Pustota) one of the patients in the psychiatric hospital spends his time making cranes out of the pages of his notebooks, and then tossing them on the floor. (ISBN 0670891681)
On the cover of “Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of
the World: A Novel” by Haruki Murakami, Alfred Birnbaum (Translator) is an
origami unicorn. The books is a story of computers and conspiracy
theories, unicorns and ancient lands. (ISBN 0679743464)
A book by Japanese author Yasunari Kawabata (Nobel prize for literature) called "Thousand Cranes". The narrator falls in love with a girl who is wearing a kimono with the thousand crane print pattern. (ISBN 0679762655)
"Flip-Flopped" by Jill Smolinski, (St. Martin's Press; July 2002) is a romantic comedy set in Hawaii. It includes an extensive scene in which the main character, Keeley, is taken to an erotic origami art auction on a blind date. It goes on to include her arrest for allegedly stealing the art. The origami in question (a piece entitled Vulva in Bloom), as well as references to the traditional origami crane and other origami art, play significantly throughout the novel. (ISBN 0312316119)
Timothy Sheard's "This Won't Hurt A Bit" (Creative Arts Book Company, Berkeley CA, 2001), is a murder mystery--a bit labored in the plot, but the scene-setting of the hospital from the point of view of the folks who keep it running is great. While waiting to be interrogated by the police, the hero--he's a hospital custodian and labor union rep--played a game of his own by cleaning out the receipts in his wallet: On page 271 - "He wished he knew origami. He could fold the scraps of paper into cute little birds and animals and decorate the room, like the bad guy in the action movie. Instead, he made tiny paper airplanes and launched them into the air. One flew well, making a loop-de-loop; another dipped down and immediately crashed." (ISBN 0887393136)
A thriller called “White Star”, by James Thayer
(Simon & Schuster,1995) has a tiny 5-pointed origami star on the spine and a
bigger one on the jacket front cover. The opening page has the hero
unconsciously making an origami star as he waits for the verdict in a big case.
In the past, as a sniper for the good guys, he has been in the habit of leaving
a white origami star at the site of his kills. The origami star on the cover is
the eight point star from James Sakado's 'Modern Origami' (1969) folded from a
sunken bird base. (ISBN 0671528173)
In Jonathan Kellerman's "Over the Edge", chapter 12, is the following quote: "I stood there, pondering my options, folding and unfolding the cheque until it began to look like abstract origami." (ISBN 0345466624)
"The People of Paper", by Salvadore
Plascencia, starts off in Mexico with the creation of an origami woman made from
old newspapers, including origami organs, veins made of tissue paper, cardboard legs,
and newsprint digestive tract. Her kisses give her lovers nasty paper cuts on
their tongues and their other extremities. A cat killed and gutted by a butcher is also brought back
to life with organs made of paper. Characters are wounded by gang warfare and
paper cuts, but most especially by lost love. (ISBN 1932416218)
"Obasan", by Joy Kogawa - on page 158 the characters are making paper baskets out of folding paper. (Anchor Publishing, ISBN 0385468865)
"Contrapuntal and Other Stories" by Parvathi Solomons Arasanayagam. “The Origami Bird” [pp. 43-51] shows us how even ordinary people can resort to a hatred for those who they consider better or more privileged. All that the students wished to do was cross the road, but to them, the University students are – ‘encroachers and trespassers… Hands reach from nowhere to pull the students to the ground… the officer looks furiously at … the students... The crowd is watching this drama in silent approval. At last these brash students are going to be taught a lesson… Nelu shivers… felt frail, like on Origami bird… With a sense of shock she felt the impact of a baton on the back of her skull and she crumbled into a motionless heap...’ (Godage International Publishers, Colombo, 2006 – pp. 280)
In Dean Koontz's book, "From the Corner of His Eye", there is a line when a woman is attacked in a parking lot, "she crumpled as if she were a piece of elaborately folded origami". (Bantam, November 2001, ISBN 0553582747)
In an April 12, 2007 interview with The Ithacan Online, "The Orchid Theif" writer Susan Orlean states, "Typically, people assume if you’re going to write a story about, say, origami, which is the story I did most recently, that you would read a whole bunch of books about the history of origami and be prepared. I’ve preferred always to do the kind of thing that makes journalism teachers slightly sick to their stomachs — to not do preparation, to enter the story very innocently and ignorantly, and to learn it on my feet, to learn it as I am learning, and to learn from the people who are the practitioners of whatever it is I’m writing about." While the article doesn't state it, Orlean is likely referring to her book "My Kind of Place: Travel Stories from a Woman Who's Been Everywhere", in which "Orlean conducts a tour of the world via its subcultures". (ISBN 0812974875) http://theithacan.org:80/am/publish/news/200704_Compulsive_curiosity.shtml
"Origami Striptease" by Peggy Munson; Suspect Thoughts Press. The violently poetic novel explores the complexities of desire, disability, gender, lust and love from a disabled queer femme's narrative
In Mercedes Lackey's new book "Fortune's Fool: A Tale of the Five Hundred Kingdoms (Book 3)" the heroine, Princess Ekaterina, visits a land known as Nippon and is given a magical red origami paper crane. This crane can be unfolded, written upon, and then refolded to carry the message to whomever the sender wishes. It will then wait for the recipient to write a return message and go back to her. (Luna, March 2007, ISBN 0373802668)
May 6, 2007 - Paper Craft by Catherine Daly is a book of
poetry available as a free, printable .pdf from http://www.moriapoetry.com/ebooks.html
, or as a printed, traditional book. It was designed to be importantly different
in each format
"Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens" by J.M. Barrie (1902): "Shelley was a young gentleman and as grown-up as he need ever expect to be. He was a poet; and they are never exactly grown-up. They are people who despise money except what you need for to-day, and he had all that and five pounds over. So, when he was walking in the Kensington Gardens, he made a paper boat of his bank-note, and sent it sailing on the Serpentine." http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/1332
"Eye Contact" by Cammie McGovern. Shortly after Adam, a nine-year-old boy with autism spectrum disorder, and his friend Amelia, a 10-year-old diagnosed with PDD-NOS (pervasive developmental disorder—not otherwise specified), disappear during recess from Greenwood elementary school, a traumatized Adam turns up next to Amelia's body in the nearby woods. The story centers on various characters with communication challenges and the work to unlock clues to the murder. One of the other kids in the special education room is passionate about origami, but accepts the fact that not everyone else is. (Viking, June 2006, ISBN13: 978-0670037650)
April 2008 - Via Magazine (the magazine of the West Coast chapter of American Automobile Association) sponsored an essay contest on the theme "Kindness makes friends of strangers." One entry by Janice Karahadian of Santa Rosa, CA mentions origami at the Children's Peace Monument in Hiroshima. Another describes a recovering a lost jacket: "When I approached the spot, I was surprised to find my jacket folded on the bench. It was not an ordinary fold. The collar and lapels were standing up. The arms had been folded in to raise up the neckline. The back was rounded out by tucking in the sides, and the hem was pleated at the back. To my astonishment, I saw a bird in flight in that jacket. This was the genuine magic of origami played out by an unseen artist with my jacket." (M. Cathy Martin, Palo Alto, CA). http://www.viadreamvacation.com/
"Dead I Well May Be" by Adrian McKinty. Michael Forsythe arrives as an illegal immigrant from Ireland in the early 1990s and ends up working for as an enforcer for a mobster. "I got up and grabbed the cushion from underneath the wicker seat. I rolled the cushion as tight as I could with one hand. Bob was leaning forward in his seat, a curious but not frightened expression of his face, as if he was watching me attempt origami or something. Things were going a wee toty bit better now, he was probably thinking....". (p 237, Scribner, 2003, ISBN13: 978-0743470568)