Ok, look. I have no problem with the commonly known versions of James Franco.... such as, James Franco the actor or James Franco the hottie. But James Franco the writer? Dear God, save me now.
I first heard of Franco's experimental exploits about six months ago when he showed up on a news stream as having joined a soap opera and taken it way too seriously. He basically got mad because of an interaction that went something like this.
Media: Oh, you joined the cast on a soap? How's that going?
James: OMG. You're a noob. This is not a soap. This is art.
Media: Wait, what?
James: *broods*
Media: It's a soap opera. It's General Hospital
James: This is a serious role with lots of seriousness and thought.
Media: ......
This guy is reaching as hard as he possibly can to be a philosophical person. He wants, wants, wants to be "intellectual." He went to Columbia and Tisch, which is all fine and well, and now he's going for a PhD in English at Yale, which is also (I guess) all fine and well... mainly because the more education, the better IMO.
HOWEVER, I do fear that the ensuing PhD program will encourage him to create more terrible prose. He'll soon be publishing his first story collection,
Palo Alto, which may or may not include "
Just Before the Black" aka the most painful read ever. As a writer, it's usually your job to tell the story, and relying on similes is all fine and well sometimes... but not in a way that is distracting... sort of like these little gems:
“the air plays on my forehead like a cold whisper”
“his weight spreads from his belly across the seat, like it was a plastic sack full of liquid, rolling in layers upon itself”
“it’s like a boar’s grunt, a deep thing, from the thick part of his throat”
“It looks like the point of a golf tee in his fat, clenched paw.”
“the blue shadow-smoke drifts over the gate of his teeth like fog over a graveyard”
“He smiles with rotten teeth like busted shingles”
“like a blubbery peekaboo face, so surprised”
“a laughter that bubbles out like popcorn”
“covered in flowing blood, going onto his shirt like ketchup randomness”
“I replaced the lights, but they were crooked and looked in different directions, like Peter Falk’s glass eye and real eye.”
“like standing on the cloudy threshold of heaven and seeing something so bright and tantalizing and warmy-womby-feeling but not being able to enter”
“he is hunched like a pile of trash against the base of the altar”
or my FAVORITE OF THEM ALL. He even uses similes to describe sex, such as “like a mommy with her little baby making him feel good..."
ummmmmmmmmmmmmmm..... what? If that simile doesn't make you uncomfortable, there's a problem. I mean, reading a sex scene is typically the highlight of a reader's day, but now Franco has gone and made it awkward.
Palo Alto is about some friends that work in the Palo Alto Municipal Golf Course pro shop and consider death as a fun alternative to their boredom. Right away that raises some red flegs... I mean I know it's "fiction," but knowing how bad he is at allegory and similes, I almost think maybe we're reading a version of his diary. Maybe EMO Franco thinks dying would be a fun alternative to his "boredom."
Come away from the ledge, James. Come away. Just don't read your prose to me.
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