I’m using the “I’m a brainless scumbag” excuse in regards to the fact I bought and read James Franco’s Palo Alto. The lady at the counter scolded “James Franco ruined literature, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Here’s what I thought about it:
Coming-of-age is at the centre of Franco’s interrelated string of short stories, which are marked by random acts of violence and a haunting sense of ennui. Palo Alto is reminiscent of, and perhaps inspired by, the dark coming-of-age classics Less Than Zero and The Virgin Suicides. Like those books, Palo Alto concerns bored adolescents and succeeds in evoking a particular anomic mood. Franco has an aptitude for descriptions, whether it be detailing a local 7-11 or a dark suburban street:
“I love driving down an empty dark freeway, lit up intermittently by the lights at the side of the road, and when I see the lights, I think of all the little worlds out there, and how we could pull over and have an adventure at any one of these forgotten pockets of the world, just nothing zones.”
Palo Alto has distinct aesthetic concerns. Franco litters his work with pop-cultural references from the book’s early 90s setting: Beavis And Butt-Head, 2pac, the DOOM computer game. One character sees a news report about River Phoenix’s drug overdose on Halloween just before he drunkenly drives his car over a woman in a hit-and-run. The references are finely tuned. Allusions to delinquent culture, they successfully reiterate the masculine affronts Franco writes about.
Franco’s characters, however, are appallingly dim. As one remarks, “They cared too much about fucking and being cool to really like each other.” It’s a small quote, but it unintentionally reflects what the book is all about. The teens have sex, smoke joints, drink beer, get in fights, watch Boyz N The Hood and then have some more sex. And they do it all without the slightest sense of emotion.
“Teague was dating a girl named Kate Keller who went to an all-girls school. My mom used to teach there. Kate and Teague fucked all the time, so people said. One time Barry told me that in eighth grade Teague took Kate to Wayne’s World and fingered her during the whole movie. Just watching and working.”
The characters never grow up or come to any point of enlightenment or moment of self-realisation. They’re like Lemmings (to use a Franco-esque early 90s reference), each indistinguishable from the other, burrowing around and performing mundane tasks in unison. The aforementioned character who runs over a lady while driving drunk never gets caught and eventually forgets about it. “Halfway down the block I suddenly remember, “Oh yeah, that’s where the accident happened””. Cool story, Hansel.
It’s interesting that Franco recently slammed Stephanie Meyer’s Breaking Dawn in The Paris Review. Sure, it’s got a retarded plot and it wears its heart on its sleeve, but it’s better than having no plot and absolutely no heart. Palo Alto is a proverbial Tin Man.
I know the whole point of Franco’s stories is that they’re supposed to be gossipy and godless, but reading them makes you like the characters as much (or as little) as they like each other.
It’s frustrating, because Palo Alto could have been something good, given the frameworks for Franco’s stories are so on-point. If he cares more about his characters next time, maybe James Franco won’t be as horrible at literature as he is at hosting the Oscars.
