{"id":2274,"date":"2018-02-20T10:50:24","date_gmt":"2018-02-20T17:50:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/?p=2274"},"modified":"2018-02-20T10:50:24","modified_gmt":"2018-02-20T17:50:24","slug":"americas-actor-americas-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/?p=2274","title":{"rendered":"America’s actor, America’s stories"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bob Moyer takes a look at a book from last fall, short stories from someone we think of primarily as a very good movie actor.<\/p>\n

Reviewed by Robert P. Moyer<\/p>\n

UNCOMMON TYPE. By Tom Hanks. Knopf. 405 pages. $26.95.<\/p>\n

\"uncommon\"<\/a>Tom Hanks is America\u2019s actor. By dint of good choices, good fortune and great talent, he belongs to that pantheon of actors that includes Jimmy Stewart and Gary Cooper. Even if the movie doesn\u2019t hold up to posterity, Hanks\u00a0gives us a skillful, dependable and \u2014 well, American, performance.<\/p>\n

The same can be said of these 17 short stories. There\u2019s not a clunker in the collection. Even in the least effective, a series of four stories styled as columns in a small-town newspaper, such moments of delight as the summation of sounds made by old typewriters pop up.<\/p>\n

Typewriters are both the literary and literal mechanical devices that link these stories together. There\u2019s at least one in every story \u2013 just the answer to a trivia question as in \u201cThree Exhausting Weeks,\u201d background noise in \u201cGo See Costas,\u201d or a central theme\u00a0in \u201cThese Are the Meditations of My Heart.\u201d Their presence is surprisingly not forced in a panoply of story forms, from the press junket diary of a bit part actor in \u201dA Junket in the City of Light,\u201d to the movie script of \u201cStay with Us.\u201d\u00a0 In these stories and a few others, Hanks takes advantage of his intimate knowledge of show business to bring detail alive.<\/p>\n

The strongest theme in these stories, however, emanates directly from Hanks. He is America\u2019s actor \u2014 these are American stories. Not just any America, but a kinder, more accepting America, where a World War II vet comes back not bitter because he lost part of a leg and a hand, but grateful because he\u2019s alive and \u201c\u2026felt like he had won the 1945 Irish Sweepstake.\u201d \u00a0\u00a0Hanks\u2019 America is one where the giant couple looming over the deteriorating desert town motel in \u201cStay with Us\u201d becomes the centerpiece of a billionaire\u2019s social project; a multi-ethnic quartet of friends hangs out with the intimacy of a sitcom in the making in two stories; and a billionaire from the future returns to the joy of the 1939 New York World\u2019s Fair time and again for love because \u201cThe Past Is Important to Us.\u201d\u00a0The best of these stories is the tale of\u00a0a Balkan immigrant in Manhattan, who finds succor at every turn during his struggle to survive, even in the most unlikely corners, when he is told to \u201cGo See Costas.\u201d These stories take us on a tour of an America we think of fondly in these partisan times.<\/p>\n

Hanks has gone from the stage to page with the same expertise that he has demonstrated in his acting career. You may not be thrilled with all his work, but you won\u2019t be disappointed. His is an Uncommon Type<\/em> of talent.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bob Moyer takes a look at a book from last fall, short stories from someone we think of primarily as a very good movie actor. Reviewed by Robert P. Moyer UNCOMMON TYPE. By Tom Hanks. Knopf. 405 pages. $26.95. Tom Hanks is America\u2019s actor. By dint of good choices, good fortune and great talent, he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,426,89],"tags":[143,1030,1031],"class_list":["post-2274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-contemporary-literary-fiction","category-popular-fiction","category-short-fiction","tag-short-stories","tag-tom-hanks","tag-uncommon-type"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2274"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2274\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2276,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2274\/revisions\/2276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}