Uncommon Type

Over the past few weeks, I've discovered that most people have a typical Tom Hanks reference character. Even if they sometimes don't know the name of said character, when asked, they will say "Captain Philips", "The one from The Green Mile", "That guy on the island talking to a volley ball", "The guy from Polar Express" or simply "You've got mail" or "Catch me if you can". One even mentioned Woody from Toy Story. My personal reference character is Forrest Gump, although Saving Private Ryan is never far from my mind (I try actively not to think about that film at least once a week).
Anyway, the point is; Tom Hanks has played some wildly different characters over the years. You may think he is 'the rom-com guy' due to You've got mail and Sleepless in Seattle, but you can't exactly call Saving Private Ryan a rom-commy movie. He is pretty versatile in what he does, making very different characters come to life, and somehow most roles tend to stick in someones mind (although nobody mentioned Robert Langdon from the Dan Brown film adaptations, which I quietly thought was a good thing). That is quite a gift, compared to many type-casts who only know how to play 'the love interest' or 'the villain' or 'the ex-CIA/FBI agent returning for one last rogue operation'. (His female counterpart in this, to me, is Meryl Streep).

So why am I going on about the various acting jobs of Tom Hanks, while this post is clearly labelled as being about 'books' and 'reading'? Well, mr Hanks turns out to be even more versatile than I thought, as apart from acting in, writing, and producing films, he has also written a book. Not a novel, but a collection of short stories entitled Uncommon Type. Wikipedia tells us that as early as November 2014, "Hanks said he would publish a collection of short stories based on his typewriter collection". Just let that sink in: the man has a typewriter collection, which he writes short stories about, which he says he will publish, and three years later he actually does publish a short story collection about his typewriter collection. I mean, it is a combination of facts one would never expect to find with one person. This sentence alone deserves its own film!
Anyway, I put the book on my wishlist for my birthday, got it, and then it spent about three months sitting on a shelf, because it's a short story collection about typewriters by Tom Hanks; who would waste their time on that? But the reviews were pretty positive, and I was curious to find whether this really was only published because the author is famous so it will inevitably sell well, so I decided to make it my second read of 2018. If anything, it would fulfil my 'more short story collections' goal of 2018.

But it did so much more than that. Mr Hanks knows how to write. Seriously.

Apart from the first and last story, all stories are stand-alone; they differ in time, location, main character, and above all; plot. The first is from about 1910, if memory serves, and the last is set some time in the near future. The main characters range from a billionaire wanting to travel to the past via a Bulgarian immigrant sneaking into the US to a small-town actress trying her luck in New York City. Apart from one film script, the stories are all of the conventional type: 10-50 pages, prose with a nice twist towards the end (there are some newspaper articley bits in there, which I did not like and did not read, so I am disregarding those). The twists are not of Roald Dahl's bitter or cynical quality; nevertheless, they are good. Some of these stories made me put the book aside for a couple of minutes just to think about them. Some made me speed up my reading just to know for sure the main character would end up alright. Some were forgettable, not downright boring but with less well-written characters or themes.
Because it is the characters that make these stories. The plots are not surprising or unique in any way, there are too many stories on the acting/filming industry and others also includes American Dreamy subject matter that we have all seen before (again; for great short stories, check out Roald Dahl). But the characters are great. I really felt I got to know them in the few short pages I spent time with them. They were distinct, well-written and had a lot of character depth and development. This should not be surprising from an actor who has made his living being so many different people himself (ah, and so the blog post comes full circle), but it is still nice to have.

So what about these typewriters? Mr Hanks himself said he would write "short stories based on his typewriter collection". Well, the one combining element in all stories is that they each feature a typewriter. Not in a forced way; in some stories the typewriter is simply mentioned as part of the inventory of a room; in some stories one of the characters doodles around with one while waiting for other things to happen; but in some, the typewriter is important and in one (These are the meditations of my heart) it actually is the main plot element. In almost all stories, we get the make, colour, shape and age of the typewriter. The page preceding each short story shows a picture of the typewriter used in that story, probably all typewriters from Mr Hanks' personal collection. All, except for the last story. That does not feature a typewriter, but a bowling ball. The picture shows an object (could be typewriter, could be bowling ball) in protective casing. Now I wouldn't put it beyond Tom Hanks to also have a collection of bowling balls, and of at this moment writing a short story collection based on it. We will see in a couple of years... In the meantime, this will do just fine, even for those without a fascination for typewriters...