Everyone’s type
Matt Suddain experiences the charm offensive that is Tom Hanks
In the VIP room, Southbank Literature Festival chief executive Elaine Bedell is giving a short speech to tell us who Tom Hanks is, and what he’s doing here. We know who Tom Hanks is. We know why he’s here. He’s a living god, and he’s here to promote Uncommon Type, his book of short stories that are all about typewriters, or all feature typewriters — or something along those lines.
There are some big ships sailing into town for the festival. The HMSPhilip Pullman. The USS Hillary Rodham Clinton. But the prospect of the arrival of Tom Hanks’ ship ( which I’m imagining as a modest sailboat lovingly crafted from wood reclaimed from a genuine Boston tea clipper, stamped with the name “You’ve Got Sails”) is making people ship themselves with expectation.
Hanks is en route, Bedell explains. Apparently he’s not even going to his hotel first. He plans to arrive and walk right out on stage, because the man is an American legend. At the end of her speech Bedell asks for donations for the venue’s new pyramid lights. There’s a smatter of polite applause and she leaves, chastened.
Downstairs in the packed auditorium a different festival rep takes another crack at telling us who Hanks is, and why he’s here. The crowd vibrates restlessly. Finally the man himself steps out, and a thousand people completely lose their ship. The guy directly behind me does that thing where you shove your fingers in the corner of your mouth and whistle as hard as you can. The blast from his lungs hits the back of my head like a jet of water. A woman just in front of me is doing that thing where you clap your hands incredibly fast with a look of concentration on your face, like you’re trying to win a contest for how much you love Tom Hanks — which, in this crowd? Good luck, lady.
Hanks is doing his stuff: waving, smiling, making a mock presidential speech at the podium, messing with the vintage typewriters arranged on stage. A man is there to provide BSL translation for the deaf. He has a back- up signer — presumably in case he drops from exhaustion from trying to keep up with the unrelenting pace of Hanks’ banter. The conversation is also being transcribed by a high- octane typist on a big screen stage rear, and there’s close- up video of Hanks’ face — maybe for the lip- readers in the room.
“Thank you very much, everybody,” he says. “On a school night to come out this side of the river.” Half an hour in London and he’s already learned the casual bankism often inflicted on us Southsiders by those who live north of the river.
“I’m glad you got the river snobbery on your first visit here,” says Gaby Wood, literary director of the Booker prize, who is here to chat to him, but is largely unneeded.
“It seems like this man needs no introduction,” she continues before launching into the second introduction in the space of minutes,
“. . . an actor, a director, a producer . . . ”
“A charm machine,” Hanks interjects and gets an applause break. The love in the room is immense. He’s unspeakably charming. Hideously charming. He veers between topics unprompted, talking about typewriters, why he finds them fascinating.
“This is what fascinates me about typewriters. They’re meant to do one thing, and one thing only, and with a tiny bit of maintenance it will last a thousand years.”
Collecting typewriters, he says, is a lot cheaper than collecting cars.
“Or pianos — very large objects, pianos. Wurlitzer organs — don’t start collecting those. Guitars are nice to collect because you hang them on the wall, but if you don’t play the guitar then what’s the f*** in’ point!” He points gleefully at the BSL translator while the man blushingly signs the expletive, and gets his own rapturous applause- break. It’s a short moment in the sun before the attention moves back to Hanks.
Over the course of the evening he enthusiastically reads to us, and tells us stories, like a father with once- a- month visitation rights he needs to make count. You can watch the whole thing on YouTube if you fancy. There might well be better practitioners of the short story art at work today, but I doubt Alice Munro can do crowd- work like Tom Hanks.
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The love in the room is immense. He’s unspeakably charming. Hideously charming.