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Vice Blog

FRIDAY TYRANT - JAMES FRANCO'S PALO ALTO

About two years ago I heard James Franco had (or was getting) an MFA, and that he'd been studying at Columbia and some other schools as well. I also heard that he was enrolled in the summer Gordon Lish course that I was signed up to attend as well. That's where I heard all about him, from the girls in the class. When I first heard he was writing, I thought, "That's cool. That's cool he's studying writing and that he's picked some good teachers. He probably has a lot of good, weird Hollywood shit to write about." Just from the few films of his that I've seen, James Franco seems like a really great guy. And you just know he probably is, right?

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I emailed his publicist at Simon and Schuster for a possible review copy of Palo Alto but was ignored, so I had to go out on a rainy afternoon and buy the fucking thing myself. That did not put me in the most amicable mood when I sat down for the read. That aside, I'd like to think that even if James Franco had delivered the book to me personally, along with a blowjob and a straw basket containing small meats and cheeses, I would still say what I'm about to say.

Maybe it's just me, but I have trouble getting through a lot of books. Even the well-reviewed and "classically important" titles have their trouble keeping my attention. So consider this a review that's more about "the experience" of reading Palo Alto and not a real review because I had to skim through a lot of it. I read five of the stories to completion, and the rest of them I couldn't get more than two pages into before I'd start wondering, "Did my grandmother regret coming to America?" and, "I wonder what that girl Tashana from high school is doing right now?" and "What if I fucking have AIDS?" If Franco's main priority in writing this book was to bounce the reader's attention off of the text and back into the reader's own mind and memories, then job well done. You've taken me to that place where I have to flip back ten pages to see what's been going on because I wasn't retaining shit from what I was just reading. I don't want to sound too harsh here. It's not that terrible of a book. You know what I'd call it if I were forced to call it? Workshopped. It's been workshopped. Almost to death. But the workshopping of these stories did take place in some of the best workshops in the country. So they got that going for them (if that's something you think "goes" for anything). See, you might not know this, but there is writing and then there is writing that has been workshopped. It's pretty easy to tell which is which. Most of the time you can tell if a story wasn't written with one hand. You can tell that a workshopped story has been watered down to please the majority. As far as editing goes, I'll just say this: A good writer should know how to cover the tracks of his editor. That is, if they haven't already been covered by the editor himself, because part of his job is to make sure that his tracks are covered completely.

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Something seems awry to me with these stories. Some of the writing in them fucking blahed me out more than any other writing has blahed me out in my entire life. But! But then there are these rare moments where I am entirely like, "There you go! That's some solid shit right there, Jimmy Franco." It gets so confusing. One of my theories on the book's unevenness is this: Franco writes a story, then Ben Marcus or whoever makes a couple (but not enough) good edits, then Franco makes the suggested changes but forgets to work them into the story and make them fit, and then Franco publishes the story before he's worked long enough on it. At this point in his writing career, I'd say Franco has a half-voice. His voice has not fully formed, yet it is coming closer and closer to forming throughout the book. His true voice, that will hopefully someday be honed in on a little tighter, has yet to develop. You can kind of see what it will be like if he continues to write and publish, and it could be a great thing, but so far it hasn't surfaced. When you have a voice that isn't fully formed, then other voices (of your editors, your fellow MFA-ers, your teachers) make their way into your writing and stand out in there rather than blend and get hidden. I want you to look at something.

"A car drove up very fast. It was a white SUV. There was a person on the hood. The car stopped abruptly and the person fell off into the street. Then the SUV backed up and drove away. Everyone on the lawn ran to the body. I did too."

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and

"His arms were thin but muscular. They had all these old scars and bruises on them. He had short, straight blond hair and a cherubic face, with a perfect nose. He was so handsome, but also like a little boy and dangerous."

Those two graphs represent the style and level of writing you are going to get for 98% of the book. It isn't terrible. Just a little blah, right? It's not bad writing, but I mean, it just kind of blahs you out, right? But now check this piece:

"Birds, and birds, and animals, and things; with slingshots, and BB guns, we killed 'em, and killed 'em. We killed so many."

Wow. Lish-all-of-a-sudden much? This is like some formula Lishian prose. I'm pretty sure Ben Marcus is a former student of Gordon Lish so Franco could have picked up a trick or two through him to arrive at a moment of writing that's living if only barely and briefly. Or he could have picked up a trick on his own. If he is capable of writing the third example above, then there is no reason why his book shouldn't be filled with sentences equally as interesting. Maybe you're thinking, "Maybe he just wants to write simply." If you are, then I'm thinking right after you, "Being minimal about things is hard to do and I don't think he's pulled it off." I realize that writers change tones and style throughout their work. Franco does try on a few styles but none of them are very different from one another. But then you get a rare gem every now and then, a sentence or graph that kicks your dick in. If Franco is capable of composing the few excellent moments I ran across in his book, then he should be able to write a book that is brimming with them. I really hope he does someday. I'd love to read it.

I kind of feel like I'm not writing a proper review so, here, let me say some things to make this sound more professional:

plot, characters, narrative, style, foreshadowing, arc, tone, post-modern, post-ironic, and filmic.

There, now that that's done, I just have a couple of questions. Jamie? Can I call you Jamie? Jamie, why publish under your real name? I mean, if you're the most sought after Hollywood piece of ass in the world and you step into the forum of publishing literature with the intentions of being taken seriously, why would you ever use your real name? You will never know if sales or reviews are fair because of what you already are in the readers' eyes. The fact that every girl, woman, and homosexual male wants to stick their tongue down the back of your trousers only adds to the impossibility of you ever knowing if people honestly liked your book. I just think it would have been cool if you'd've published under a different name. Then after having fucking killed it in reviews and sales, one day you would be reading a rave review from Michiko and you could immediately be all, "Hey World full of doubters and assholes! That shit that you just said was awesome? I fucking wrote it! And writing is just my hobby! My day job is being an actor millionaire! Ah ha ha ha!" You know? That would have been so sweet.

GIANCARLO DITRAPANO