Uncommon Type: Some Stories

by Tom Hanks

Overview

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: NPR, USA Today • A collection of “first-rate” short stories (The New York Times) that explore—with great affection, humor, and insight—the human condition in all its foibles.

A small-town newspaper columnist with old-fashioned views of the modern world. A World War II veteran grappling with his emotional and physical scars. A second-rate actor plunged into sudden stardom and a whirlwind press junket. Four friends traveling to the moon in a rocketship built in the backyard. These are just some of the stories that Tom Hanks captures in his first work of fiction.

The stories are linked by one thing: in each of them, a typewriter plays a part, sometimes minor, sometimes central.

To many, typewriters represent a level of craftsmanship, beauty, and individuality that is harder and harder to find in the modern world. In these stories, Hanks gracefully reaches that typewriter-worthy level. By turns whimsical, witty, and moving, Uncommon Type establishes him as a welcome and wonderful new voice in contemporary fiction.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101911945
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	09/04/2018
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	416
Sales rank:	60,137
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

TOM HANKS has been an actor, screenwriter, director and, through Playtone, a producer.  His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, and The New Yorker.  This is his first collection of fiction.

Read an Excerpt

A Month on Greene Street
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Uncommon Type"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Tom Hanks.
Excerpted by permission of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Three Exhausting Weeks 3

Christmas Eve 1953 35

A Junket in The City of Light 61

Our Town Today With Hank Fiset-an Elephant in The Pressroom 85

Welcome to Mars 91

A Month on Greene Street 113

Alan Bean Plus Four 145

Our Town Today With Hank Fiset-at Loose in The Big Apple 157

Who'S Who? 163

A Special Weekend 187

These Are The Meditations of My Heart 225

Our Town Today With Hank Fiset-Back From Back in Time 243

The Past is Important to Us 249

Stay With Us 287

Go See Costas 345

Our Town Today With Hank Fiset-Your Evangelista, Esperanza 379

Steve Wong is Perfect 385

Acknowledgments 405

Editorial Reviews

Wonderful.” —NPR

“First-rate.” —Janet Maslin, The New York Times

 “Funny, moving, deftly surprising.” —Carl Hiaasen

 “[Hanks] is a delightful storyteller.” —Los Angeles Times

“Wise and hilarious.” —Steve Martin

“Accomplished and delightful. . . . Terrific. . . . Hanks proves his bona fides as a serious scribe.” —USA Today  

“Offers heartfelt charm. . . . Even when Hanks writes about somber subjects . . . he finds a sweet spot.” —NPR
 
“These stories are a hit. . . . There is life here, and humour, along with evocative moments of reflection on the state of the American dream.” —Financial Times

“Reading Tom Hanks’s Uncommon Type is like finding out that Alice Munro is also the greatest actress of our time.” —Ann Patchett

“Delightful. . . . Moving. . . . Filled with warmth, comedy and wisdom, this companionable collection is as appealing as its author.” —BookPage

“As charming and as (the descriptor has become unavoidable) all-American as the author himself.” —Time

“A collection that showcases [Hanks’s] love of words and typewriters.” —O, The Oprah Magazine

“There is often a powerful sense of other lives imagined at a level that goes deeper than writerly research.” —The Guardian

“A debut short story collection that’s as engaging it is charming.” —Paste

“The central quality to Tom’s writing is a kind of poignant playfulness. It’s exactly what you hope from him, except you wish he were sitting in your home, reading it aloud to you, one story at a time.” —Mindy Kaling

“Skillfully crafted. . . . Smart and equally heartfelt, this collection is a must-read for fans of the actor and literary lovers alike.” —Bustle

“Spiked with humor, whimsy and insight. . . . Mr. Hanks creates a strong sense of people, places and possibilities. . . . The short stories in Uncommon Type often explore what might have been, what was before (and after) the divorce, or the move, or the press junket gone awry.” —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“Funny, wise, gloriously inventive and humane. Tom Hanks sees inside people—a wary divorcee, a billionaire trading desire for disaster, a boy witnessing his father’s infidelity, a motley crew shooting for the moon—with such acute empathy and good humour we’d follow him anywhere.” —Anna Funder, author of Stasiland and All That I Am

 “Tom Hanks is a natural born storyteller. . . . He belongs to a tradition of American storytellers that includes Mark Twain or O Henry although there is a range of work in Uncommon Type that defies such a catch-all definition. . . . There is an ease in his writing and a pleasure in the reading.” —The Scotland Herald
“Creative and funny. . . . Cut[s] right down to the bone of human nature.” —Austin Chronicle 

“The stories in Uncommon Type range from the hilarious to the deeply touching. . . . All demonstrate a joy in writing, a pleasure in communicating an intensely American sense of atmosphere, friendship, life and family that is every bit as smart, engaging and humane as the man himself.” —Stephen Fry

“Superbly observed. . . . [There is a] variety of voices here, all of them masterfully hewn and cosily embedded.” —Irish Independent

“Delightful. . . . Hanks’s prose is impressive, with a strong voice and stylistic flair. . . . Fluent, convincing and confident.” —The Times (London)

From the Publisher

08/21/2017
Oscar-winner Hanks’s debut collection is a wide-ranging affair of 17 stories threaded together by the recurring image of typewriters—some stories, like the intriguing “These Are the Meditations of My Heart,” build entire narratives around the machines, while others mention them in passing. In “Alan Bean Plus Four,” one of the collection’s best entries, four friends decide to build a backyard rocket and orbit the moon. These same characters star in two more stories, the enjoyable bowling yarn “Steve Wong Is Perfect,” and the less noteworthy “Three Exhausting Weeks,” which uses standard romantic comedy tropes in recollecting a wacky and doomed relationship. Hanks’s stories sometimes lead to pat, happy endings, but not always—“Christmas Eve 1953” develops a simple holiday story into a rumination on war. Similarly, “The Past Is Important to Us” employs a sharp, unexpected conclusion to elevate a story of time travel and romance at the 1939 World’s Fair. Hanks’s narrators speak with similar verbal tics—multiple narrators say “Noo Yawk,” for example—but the stories they tell generally charm. The only true misfires come when Hanks breaks away from traditional structure: the story-as-screenplay “Stay With Us” drags, and faux newspaper columns by man of the people Hank Fiset start clever but turn grating. 250,000-copy announced first printing. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

10/15/2017
Academy Award winner Hanks gives readers a wide variety of stories in this first collection. His characters run the gamut; old and young, rich and poor, male and female, serious and funny. He writes like someone who has paid attention to humans in their many guises. His subjects include time travel (a trip to 1939), space travel (a trip to the moon and back), and memory travel (a World War II battle). In one story, a teenager accidentally learns about his father's infidelity, while in the next, a young boy meets his mother's boyfriend without understanding who he is. Several pieces feature the same characters, creating a feeling of familiarity. In all 17 stories, typewriters figure as part of the landscape, and 14 photographs of typewriters (by Kevin Twomey) accompany various narratives. VERDICT Hanks's stories evoke dreams and flights of imagination that everyone has experienced, making the "what ifs" of life tangible. Highly recommended, and not just for the actor's many fans. [See Prepub Alert, 4/10/17.]—Joanna Burkhardt, Univ. of Rhode Island Libs., Providence

Library Journal

The charm of Tom Hanks's debut collection of stories stems from the inspiration he draws from an oft-forgotten and much-maligned machine that, despite its obsolescence, holds possibilities unknown—the typewriter. Clearly, Hanks, who collects typewriters, is smitten. When such a unique motif is coupled with one of Hollywood's most popular voices, one is naturally curious. The stories are wide ranging, at times funny, bizarre, and poignant—but the real draw is Hanks himself. As expected, his performance is charismatic. His strengths shine in male characters, especially curious boys and men in conversation. He regularly plays with accents, making memorable a couple of recurring characters. The final story, a screenplay, offers a special treat—a full cast of his friends performing along with him. A.S. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

OCTOBER 2017 - AudioFile

2017-07-04
Seventeen wide-ranging and whimsical stories—with a typewriter tucked into each one.Only one of the stories in Hanks' debut features an actor: it's a sharp satire with priceless insider details about a handsome dope on a press junket in Europe. The other 16 span a surprisingly wide spectrum. There's a recently divorced mom who's desperate to avoid the new neighbor who might be hitting on her; a billionaire inventor who's become addicted to taking time-travel vacations; a World War II veteran whose Christmas Eve 1953 is disturbed by memories of Christmas Eve 1944; a young man who celebrates his 19th birthday by going surfing with his dad; a Bulgarian immigrant literally just off the boat, spending his first few days as a New Yorker. Three stories are editions of a small-town newspaper column called "Our Town Today with Hank Fiset." Three others feature a group of pals named MDash, Anna, Steve Wong, and an unnamed first-person narrator. In one story, the friends go bowling; in another, they go to the moon; in the third, the narrator and Anna try dating for three weeks only to find that "being Anna's boyfriend was like training to be a Navy SEAL while working full-time in an Amazon fulfillment center in the Oklahoma Panhandle in tornado season." Or as Steve Wong puts it, "We are like a TV show with diversity casting. African guy, him. Asian guy, me. Mongrel Caucasoid, you. Strong, determined woman, Anna, who would never let a man define her. You and her pairing off is like a story line from season eleven when the network is trying to keep us on the air." There's a typewriter in every tale, be it IBM Selectric, Royal, Underwood, Hermes 2000, or some other model. Hanks can write the hell out of typing, and his dialogue is excellent, too. Has he read William Saroyan? He should. While these stories have the all-American sweetness, humor, and heart we associate with his screen roles, Hanks writes like a writer, not a movie star.

Kirkus Reviews