Palo Alto (James Franco)

It's difficult in many ways to know whether one should admire James Franco or hate him. Not content with being annoyingly handsome, in possession of a very well respected acting career, hosting this year's oscars, studying for a Phd at Yale and dabbling in the LA visual arts scene, he's now turned his hand to writing as well. The gorgeous silver and blue design of the cover image actually drew me to leaf through this book before I realised who it was by. When I clocked the name on the front, I thought it was a coincidence (bear in mind I once taught a kid called Michael Jackson). But no, flick to the back and the author photo stares back in black and white, the son of the Green Goblin cast as brooding writer. I nodded sagely and proceeded to the counter.

It's worth pointing out at this juncture that Franco is published by Faber and Faber, which should be proof enough that he is serious about this storytelling lark. Read the first story and it'll become clear that this is no mere Hollywood vanity project; this is seriously good stuff. 'Palo Alto', set in the suburbs of the eponymous northern Californian city, is a short story cycle following a loosely connected group of teens through the trials of budding adulthood, which of course primarily revolve around intoxication, sex and violence, in that order. Put that baldly, I admit that this premise sounds horribly clichéd, but the Carver-esque poetry of the prose carries a great deal of profound message behind the seeming simplicity of the narratives. The short, clipped syntax, married to a darkly cinematic tone makes for a book that I found exceedingly difficult to put down, and certainly one that I will return to again and again.

Franco very much shows himself to be a worthy successor to the likes of Bret Easton Ellis (whose own short fiction collection, 'The Informers' works in a similar way) and J.D Salinger in chronicling just how disaffected and morally ambivalent middle class America can be. Self interest is the primary thematic marker, with each character utterly self-absorbed in a fashion I found very realistic, at least from my own recollections of teenage thought patterns. The darkness in these stories is never far away, yet never does it seem melodramatic or self-pitying, and never does the denouement to each story seem forced or obvious. It's hard to get attached to any of the narrators, but that's the point, they are a passing voices of their generation that form a chorus of flat noise. It works beautifully.

I particularly enjoyed the first story 'Halloween', which rather put me in mind of 'Donnie Darko' minus the Physics and Psychosis. The final story, 'I Could Kill Someone' is another mini-masterpiece, a profound study of homophobic bullying and the ever present nature of guns as a solution to American problems. The only story I didn't like was 'Chinatown', which I found was trying to be sexually unpleasant for the sake of being sexually unpleasant. The early nineties setting of all of these stories massively resonates with me, having grown up in that era too (I was particularly thrilled by a reference to the overdose of River Phoenix) and I was definitely pulled into the meta-world created by Franco.

James Franco is clearly a Renaissance Man in an age of cave people, and he should be applauded for embracing the arts so completely and for continuing to push himself. I truly hope that this book is the first of many, because he has an acute eye for detail and the ability to deliver a truly devastating kiss off. Although I would never go so far as to say that this book comes close in quality to the likes of 'Less Than Zero' or 'The Rules of Attraction', it's certainly no bad stab at the overall impression of those books.