UNCOMMON TYPE by Tom Hanks

Stories, Characters & Typewriters: UNCOMMON TYPE by Tom Hanks – a Book Review

“I type almost every day,” Tom Hanks once said, while showcasing one of his 250 fully-operating typewriters.

“This keyboard right here — which does not have that many keys on it — is all you need to recreate everything from Ulysses to the screenplay of The Matrix,” Tom explained in a recent interview. [1]

“This thing is bulletproof. Nigh on indestructible… The main thing is, all you need to make this thing last forever is a little oil, the ability to either get the ribbons or re-ink them yourself — which you can do very easily by going onto the internet and ask ‘How to I re-ink a typewriter ribbon’ — and there you go.”

Just opening up Tom’s UNCOMMON TYPE: Some Stories for the first time, flipping through the pages and looking at Kevin Twomey’s evocative black and white photos of those ol’ typewriters had this effect:

Remembering our own typewriters. Who knew we had such fond memories of those old machines? Like remembering fave childhood kittens.

Mum bought our first one. A big reconditioned Remington that smelled of metal and fine oil. We got it about the same time we got our first black and white television. A family typewriter that produced a lot of work over the years. It never broke down. My brother still has it.

One of my first paycheques from my job on the Provincial Highways Dept got me a new Eaton Viking Automatic 12 (made by SCM — Smith Corona Machines). It was gunmetal grey and electric. With a little box of interchangeable type and keys. And a metal carrying case now dented from once-upon-a-time train trips across my evergreen homeland. Wrote a novel (unpublished), short stories (published — some even under my own name) and innumerable letters to family. Only repair was to the carriage return using a length of fishing line. It still purrs when switched on.

Mary Lee brought a blue Brother Majestic 400 to our relationship. Also works.

Late in the 20th Century we got a Smith Corona PWP 3100, a pale grey electric word processing typewriter with flip-up screen showing blue lettering. Works. Still use it, both in Type mode and WP mode — except the floppy DataDisk drive is wonky.

After this mechanical memory-fest, let’s open to the first story.  Book review time.

Tom Hanks creates lovable characters.

I discovered this when Anna and Steve Wong and MDash and our Unnamed Narrator from the first story showed up again in the seventh — a flight of fancy — and finished off the book in the seventeenth tale. By the last paragraph, they were old friends.

And there’s Sue in “Who’s Who?” Facing an actor’s biggest decision?

And Virgil Beuell. His wife Deloris. Kids Davey, Jill, little Connie. In “Christmas Eve 1953.” A story reminding us why the Fifties were the Fifties and such a wonder-filled decade for Boomers to grow up in. And the hard price our Fathers had payed to give us that exhilarating wonder.

And even when Tom gives us an unsympathetic character — who can like a self-centered multi-Billionaire unhappy with his fourth young trophy wife? — I bet you’ll race through the last pages of “The Past Is Important To Us” hoping for him, hoping…

And Francis Xavier Rustan, also a billionaire and the star of the next story “Stay With Us,” who IS likable, in an easy Sixties SitCom way.  And you’ve got to meet Bea and Phil, “two adorable old folks” — my kind of people.

The typewriters? Yes, they appear in UNCOMMON TYPE. But in a good way. Not obtrusive. Heartily welcomed when they show up. Especially in “These Are The Meditations Of My Heart.” This, too, is a story about love.

Never met Tom Hanks, of course.  Never will.  But we sense we know him.  Amiable, sensitive, thoughtful, creative.  This is the voice in UNCOMMON TYPE: Some Stories.

Thanks, Tom!

And thanks to Alfred A Knoph & GoodReads for my Advance Reader’s Edition of Tom’s UNCOMMON TYPE: Some Stories.

– Brian Alan Burhoe

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[1] From an interview by Tricia Bobeda and Greta Johnsen – https://www.wbez.org/shows/nerdette/tom-hanks-and-typewriters-a-love-story/837ecca0-da85-44f3-bed3-2cd24956975b

Stories, Characters, Typewriters: UNCOMMON TYPE by Tom Hanks Book Review, Photos by Kevin Twomey

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