Tom Hanks takes his latest role, author and Portland Book Festival star, very seriously

Tom Hanks spoke about his short story collection, "Uncommon Type," at the Portland Book Festival Saturday. (Photo of Tom Hanks: Austin Hargrave)

Let's get this out of the way right away: Tom Hanks is not the first person you think of if someone says, "Who should headline a book festival?"

But there he is onstage Saturday morning in a packed Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, chatting with New York Times book critic Parul Sehgal about his short story collection, "Uncommon Type: Some Stories," as well as voice and the antagonist-protagonist narrative and how stories evolve as they're written.

And here he is in a backstage interview after his talk, poring over the festival's author lineup like any other bookworm. "Mohamed Asem. 'Stranger in the Pen,' " he says, his finger stopping at the name of a Portland author. Told that "Stranger in the Pen" is based on Asem's experience being detained at a London airport, Hanks says, "That sounds interesting." Maybe it'll become one of the titles he passes along to his staff. "I drive my staff nuts because I'll read about something and say, 'Get that, get that,' " he says.

Hanks spoke Saturday as one of two keynote authors, along with "Broad City" star Abbi Jacobson, at the Portland Book Festival, a celebration of contemporary authors and literature organized by the nonprofit Literary Arts. Formerly known as Wordstock, the festival showcases books published within the preceding 18 months. Hanks' book was published in October 2017 and came out in paperback this September.

Tom Hanks with a baby who made noises off and on during his talk at the Portland Book Festival. After joking about the baby throughout his hour onstage, Hanks asked the parents to bring the child to him and presented him to the audience. 

"Uncommon Type" grew out of a short story, "Alan Bean Plus Four," that appeared in 2014 in The New Yorker, an event that attracted some literary trolling. Slate's Katy Waldman published a piece headlined "Tom Hanks Has a Short Story in The New Yorker. It's Not Very Good." The Washington Post was slightly less snarky, noting that while the magazine had published essays and other works by the likes of Steve Martin and Tina Fey, "actor fiction does appear to be a new thing for the New Yorker." Hanks himself joked onstage Saturday that the magazine was "between leadership roles" when it accepted his story.

But get Hanks talking about his stories and it's clear how much he loves them, critics be darned. He tells Sehgal his story "Welcome to Mars" began with a beach scene he witnessed almost 30 years ago. Another story, "Because the Past is Important to Us," is rooted in a conversation about time travel that included the title phrase. Other stories started with an idea for a last line or last image, such as the semi-autobiographical "A Special Weekend," which ends with a boy searching the sky after his mother and her new boyfriend have flown away in the boyfriend's plane.

Hanks tells Sehgal he'll write more someday, drawing applause. In the meantime, he reads voraciously. Backstage, he says of the festival, "If I was here (as a Portland resident) I'd want to get a wristband and just go and hear all these people talk." He notes that he once spent the better part of a day in Powell's Books. He shares titles he's read recently, scrolling through book cover photos on his phone:

"Our Towns," by James Fallows and Deborah Fallows. ("That was great.") "Dopesick" by Beth Macy, an investigation into the opioid crisis. ("That was fantastic.") "Russka," by Edward Rutherfurd. "The German War," by Nicholas Stargardt. ("I can't get enough of reading that." And it counts as research for his production company, Playtone.) "Aurora," by Kim Stanley Robinson. ("He doesn't write science fiction. He writes theoretical science fact.") "Crazy Rich Asians," by Kevin Kwan. Some of the "Regeneration" trilogy by Pat Barker. ("Kind of drove me nuts.") "The Monk of Mokha" by Dave Eggers. ("Did you read that?")

A Los Angeles Times subscriber and New York Times and Washington Post reader, he also rattles off the names of newspaper columnists whose work he admires. In fact, several stories in "Uncommon Type" are written in the style of columnists such as the San Francisco Chronicle's Herb Caen and the Oakland Tribune's Bill Fiset, whom Hanks honors by naming his columnist Hank Fiset. He's "that guy who is always just saying, hey, we're special too, don't think you gotta go somewhere else in order to experience how unique it is to live here - let's celebrate where we're from," Hanks says.

Like the faux Fiset, Hanks uses his writing to celebrate simplicity - and serendipity. Take "Who's Who," a tale about an aspiring Broadway actress who meets with failure after failure. One day as she's walking in the rain, a man hails her from a passing car. He turns out to be her onetime mentor - and the big break she needs.

"That is a plot device," Hanks says, "but that's also a structure of the human condition that is not related to an antagonist-protagonist kind of quest. We're not all on quests. Most of our lives are really spent just trying to get to the end of the day. ... Our lives are affected by pure chance, just a combination of being in the right place at the right time or surviving those moments where we're in the wrong place at the wrong time."

"Those are the stories, those are the films, that is the art, that is the theme that I am drawn to again and again and again."

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