Uncommon Type: Some Stories

Tom Hanks

ISBN 10: 1101946156 / ISBN 13: 9781101946152

Published by Alfred A. Knopf, 2017

SIGNED. Stated First Edition. First printing with no other printings listed. Signed by Tom Hanks on the publisher's bound-in page. The book is tight with solid hinges and good tips. Crease to spine head and light smudges to boards. The textblock is clean with no writing, bookplate, or markings and not BCE, ex-library, or remaindered. B&W matte photos. The dust jacket is unclipped ($29.95) with faint crease to spine head and front flap top corner. Removable SIGNED FIRST EDITION sticker. Protected in a new Brodart Mylar cover. 403 pages. 5½ x 8¼" tall. Tom Hanks maintains a collection of over 250 typewriters, and has said in interviews that he always travels with at least two. It is unsurprising that his first published collection of fiction is united by typewriters playing major and minor roles, from the fantastic imagination of two children playing astronauts to poignant tales of nostalgia. Seller Inventory # 10546

Synopsis:

A collection of seventeen wonderful short stories showing that two-time Oscar winner Tom Hanks is as talented a writer as he is an actor.

A hectic, funny sexual affair between two best friends. A World War II veteran dealing with his emotional and physical scars. A second-rate actor plunged into sudden stardom and a whirlwind press junket. A small-town newspaper columnist with old-fashioned views of the modern world. A woman adjusting to life in a new neighborhood after her divorce. Four friends going to the moon and back in a rocket ship constructed in the backyard. A teenage surfer stumbling into his father’s secret life.

These are just some of the people and situations that Tom Hanks explores in his first work of fiction, a collection of stories that dissects, with great affection, humour, and insight, the human condition and all its foibles. 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 his stories, Mr Hanks gracefully reaches that typewriter-worthy level.

Known for his honesty and sensitivity as an actor, Mr Hanks brings both those characteristics to his writing. Alternatingly whimsical, moving and occasionally melancholy, Uncommon Type is a book that will delight as well as surprise his millions of fans. It also establishes him as a welcome and wonderful new voice in contemporary fiction, a voice that perceptively delves beneath the surface of friendships, families, love and normal, everyday behaviour.

Review: "Mr. Hanks turns out to be as authentically genuine a Writer with a capital W as ever touched a typewriter key. The stories in Uncommon Type range from the hilarious to the deeply touching. They move in period, location and manner, but 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. All with that extra quality of keenly observant and sympathetic intelligence that has always set Tom Hanks apart. I blink, bubble and boggle in amazed admiration." (Stephen Fry)

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

"All American life is here ... Delightful ... Hanks’s prose is impressive, with a strong voice and stylistic flair ... so fluent, convincing and confident that you forget it belongs to Tom Hanks, movie star. He's just a writer. And he’s going to write a great novel one day." (Melissa Katsoulis The Times)

"On the page, as on screen, Hanks is, simply, a lovely person to be around ... Hanks captures the child’s-eye view of the world with pitch-perfect accuracy ... and as a writing project it nails perhaps the hardest thing of all: a story in which nothing and everything happens." (Emma Brockes Guardian)

"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 was sitting in your home, reading it aloud to you, one story at a time." (Mindy Kaling)

Bibliographic Details

Title: Uncommon Type: Some Stories
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Publication Date: 2017
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: Near Fine
Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine
Signed: Signed by Author(s)
Edition: 1st Edition