Palo Alto: Stories by James Franco

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I picked this up in vacation off a B&B bookshelf because I’m interested in artists who work in more than one field and because I was born and raised and raised my children near Palo Alto, but a world away.

Writers sometimes write to process their experiences. This appears to be Franco’s motivation for penning this memoir turned short story collection. I found myself having difficulty sorting out the voices of the different disaffected teenagers as they told their stories. It occurred to me that this may be the point. Perhaps disaffection speaks with one voice. Rich or poor, male or female, perhaps dissatisfied and disconnected speaks with one voice.

I also wonder how Franco overcame the soullessness of the aimless existence he portrays to achieve acclaim as an actor and then to enter an MFA program and write a book. That’s the story I’d like to read.

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