"Publishers Weekly has released their review of James Franco's forthcoming short story collection, Palo Alto. It is not a good review.
'The author fails to find anything remotely insightful to say in these 11 amazingly underwhelming stories,' declares PW, adding that several stories read 'like Patrick Bateman from American Psycho fell into a Catcher in the Rye remix.'
We find this image confusing (fell into a remix?), but we will be charitable and assume that it is intended to underscore the collection's 'overall failure.' Instead, we elect to focus on a particular adverb choice: 'Amazingly.' Even when James Franco fails, he does so to an amazing degree."
I can't wait to read more reviews in which reviewers fall over themselves to hate on the book as extravagantly and inventively as possible, and like this one, overshoot. Yes, there's plenty of bad writing and his collection of short stories is probably far from the worst to come out of the MFA system (he'll catch flak just because he's a poseur), but I can't say I won't be pleased to watch the spectacle nonetheless. Whatever happened to him attending Yale to pursue a PhD in English Literature, by the way? Is that nonsense still happening?
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