March has been the month for various celebrations, including National Reading Month, so here is a review of my recent reading — Tom Hanks’ collection of short stories, “Uncommon Type: Some Stories,” published in 2017. British reviewers panned Hanks’ first attempt at creative writing, but American critics find some worth in the collection.
Hanks has been writing screenplays since 1995, but he took three years to publish a book of short stories.
Maybe the first problem for a popular movie actor lies in the notion of being taken seriously in a venue for which he has no prior experience though he claims to have been influenced by Nora Ephron whom he recognizes in the dedicatory page of the book.
During the filming of “Sleepless in Seattle,” Nora and her sister Delia Ephron had written a scene in the script that Hanks objected to — the one where Hanks’ character defends his going away for the weekend with his girlfriend to his 11-year-old son. They liked Hanks’ alternative version of that scene, and Nora Ephron said to Hanks, “You are a writer.”
A second barrier may be that he is trading on his name, so well known to those of us who have admired his cinematic characters like Mr. Rogers, Forrest Gump and Andrew Beckett, the lawyer in “Philadelphia.” Is a reading audience the same as the audience who admire his film work and will give the book a chance on that basis?
Certainly Hanks’ motives for writing a short story collection range far beyond the monetary; in fact, in an interview at the Chicago Humanities Festival, Hanks explained that he wanted to “stretch himself,” that he wanted to explore “themes about the human condition.” He said he wanted to expand on ideas that needed translating into prose rather than film.
In the same interview, the interviewer Peter Sagal, host of the radio show, “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me,” points out that Hanks’ jobs as actor, producer, screenwriter, and director involved collaboration while writing demands solitude. Hanks acknowledged that he loses weight when he is writing, but when inspiration strikes, he cannot stop. In an NPR interview, he said, “These stories have all rattled around in my head, and they leaked out.”
HIS LOVE FOR TYPEWRITERSA recurring motif in the collection — typewriters — reflects Hanks’ obsession with collecting typewriters. Hanks’ editor liked the inclusion of a typewriter in one of the stories, inspiring the author to insert a typewriter deliberately into most of the 17 stories.
Hanks said in the NPR interview: “There is something I find reassuring, comforting, dazzling in that here is a very specific apparatus that is meant to do one thing, and it does it perfectly.” He sees the letters typed into the page rather than on the page, and this dynamic implies permanency and stability.
THE STORIESThe first typewriter appears in the second story, “Christmas Eve 1953.” The main character, Virgil Buell, awaits Santa Claus with his wife, Del, and children Davey, Jill, and baby Connie. The children type letters to Santa on a portable Remington Del had bought for Virgil when he was in an Army hospital. Only when Virgil goes to the snow-laden car to retrieve presents do we realize he has lost his lower left leg in the war.
At a few minutes after midnight, Virgil takes an annual Christmas phone call from a war buddy, Amos “Bud” Boling. Bud had carried Virgil to an aid station after Virgil was shot in the hand and the knee during a German attack in 1944. Though Bud was never wounded, he lost his soul in the war, killing countless German men and boys without mercy. Virgil reflects on his great luck in his marriage, children, and work, regretting that his friend Bud will never know those joys.
The adage “write about what you know” holds true in one story, “Alan Bean Plus Four,” in which four recurring characters — the first-person narrator and his friends Anna, MDash, and Steve Wong — plan a trip to fly around the moon in a spheroid called “Alan Bean.” The technical details about space travel Hanks must have learned in his role as Jim Lovell in “Apollo 13.” An agent sent this story to The New Yorker where it was published.
Several stories relate the perspective of young boys and men as they come of age. In “Welcome to Mars,” 19-year-old Kirk Ullen discovers his father’s infidelity during a day of surfing at Mars Beach to celebrate Kirk’s birthday. Kenny Stahl, in “A Special Weekend,” who has three stepsisters and a stepbrother two years older, awaits his mother to pick him up to celebrate his birthday. His mother’s boyfriend takes them on a plane ride that thrills the boy: “Kenny’s first flight in an airplane was the most amazing event of his life. His head seemed to fill with air and his breath went short. The sun was brighter than it had ever been before, and Kenny was glad he had dark glasses.”
It’s no surprise that Hanks’ stories have a gentle tone; he comes across in person as genuine, optimistic, smart, and astute. He says of the stories, [they] “are about people who just want to get to the end of their day.”
An NPR review acknowledges that Hanks’ first work is “not great literature; it’s too generic and mawkish.” England’s The Guardian calls the author to task for using too many cliches, charging that the stories are “forgettable, ... touched by the special banality of mere competence.” Other readers find the stories charming, poignant, and clever.
In our current time — that was seeming peaceful after the tumult of an election and attack on the nation’s Capitol — these stories offer a balm, considering two mass shootings that will continue to plague us. Hanks’ stories offer escape, pleasure, and enlightenment, and they may “help us get to the end” of our day.
Liz Meador is a retired English instructor from Wayne Community College and an adjunct at North Carolina Wesleyan College.
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