A Book Review: Palo Alto stories

James Franco is a man of many talents. All one has to do is look at his extensive resume: an award winning actor, an artist, a writer and poet and soon to be doctor of English. Franco received his B.A. in writing at UCLA and continued on to Brooklyn College, Columbia and NYU to receive three different M.F.A.s in writing, poetry and film, all at the same time might I add. Between traveling for his latest film "127 Hours" (which he received a Golden Globe Best Actor Award nomination for) and preparing to co-host the Oscars with actress Anne Hathaway, he is studying in a small town on the east coast at a school some of us may have heard of, a university by the name of Yale. Franco is truly dedicated to his creative persona.
Palo Alto stories was a good read, for an inspiring educator point of view. The stories of middle and high schoolers rebelling and having a careless, I-don't-do-anything-care-about-anything view on life is eye-opening. Though stories have been told about America's youth, just think back to J.D. Salinger's character Holden Caulfield in Catcher in the Rye, Franco is not scared to write about the disturbed and unexpected thought provoking minds.
The beginnings and ends of the stories are not clear, as the characters carry over. Each story is told in the first-person, although the reader is unclear as to what character is actually relaying the story. I however, was able to look past this bump, but what got me was Franco's writing technique. The book definitely read like short stories that would be read in a college creative writing course. Franco's sentences are short and choppy. He mentions authors like Jack Kerouac and William Faulkner which to me, are clearly the authors that Franco himself enjoys and looks up to to find his own inspiration.
Palo Alto stories isn't the best book out there, which is made clear by many of the reviews which direct readers to read Catcher in the Rye and The Outsiders instead. However, I applaud Franco for using his "creative juice" and doing something different besides the "I am an actor so I think I will try directing and producing now" stunt that many actors and actresses do.