Typewriter love stories

While on a Viking cruise in Europe last summer my wife and I had the chance to watch the documentary film California Typewriter about a variety of people, including actor Tom Hanks, who remain in love with the typewriter in the computer age. The film gives some perspective to Uncommon Type, a collection of short stories by Hanks published in 2017, a year after the documentary was released.

Although the stories, most of them at any rate, are not about typewriters, a particular typewriter (Remington, Royal Desktop, Hermes 2000, Olympia, etc.) is mentioned in each. A photograph of that typewriter (perhaps from Hanks's own collection?) appears at the beginning of each tale.

These stories are a varied lot. One is a screenplay. Several take the form of a newspaper column. They represent different styles, different time periods (although all after the invention of the typewriter, of course) and different levels of seriousness. All are enjoyable, but the best may be those that actually work a typewriter into the plot. I loved "Christmas Eve 1953" about a disabled war veteran enjoying "the theater that was his family" on Christmas Eve. The children type their letters to Santa on a Remington and go to bed, while their father returns to the war in his mind. Even missing a leg, Virgil feels blessed.

Another gem, "These Are the Meditations of My Heart," tells of a woman who buys a toy typewriter on a whim, more as an act of charity than because of a need for a typewriter. This leads to an attempt to get the typewriter repaired and then to the purchase of a really good typewriter, that Hermes 2000. Then, inspired, she begins to write.

It was a Smith-Corona portable that inspired me to write back in the late 1950s. Now I am content to use a computer. I make too many mistakes for a typewriter, but still this particular story, and to a lesser extent all the stories in the book, resonates with me.

I'm betting Hanks wrote them all on a typewriter.