Actor James Franco Reportedly Sells His First Novel

Modern day Renaissance man, James Franco, has reportedly sold his first novel to Amazon. And I thought the actor turned grad student turned Oscar host (I could go on) was already a published author. Upon further research (okay, I just googled ‘James Franco author’) I discovered that Franco did, indeed, publish a collection of short stories, Palo Alto, in October 2010. But this new venture with Amazon, titled Actors Anonymous, is his first full-length novel.

I sort of developed a slight crush on Franco as the oddly stiff and tortured Harry Osborn in the Spiderman trilogy but my infatuation turned to something much deeper as I started to follow his quirky and scholarly off-screen antics (even though he certainly lost some points with me because of his behavior at my alma mater). There’s just something about an adorably pretentious asshole that I find undeniably attractive, I mean he’s studying how to turn poetry into film – could it get more pretentious? And he chose to act on a soap opera even when he didn’t have to. He just liked doing it. What a rebel; his portrayal of James Dean seems to have certainly stuck!

The ironically mustachioed jack of all trades touts the forthcoming novel as a fictionalized account of his misadventures as an actor. Franco’s choice of publisher was right in line with his usual maverick style – going the non-traditional route with Amazon, rather than putting out a second offering with Scribner, who published his collection of short stories.

Franco’s first forays as a published writer were short stories he’d written for classes that were later snatched up by Esquire and McSweeney’s. Those successes led him to publish Palo Alto, a collection of stories depicting the lives of a series of teens in Palo Alto, California, where Franco grew up. The book received mixed reviews, being called a “promising debut from a most unlikely source,” by The Guardian, while the Los Angeles Times said it was “the work of an ambitious young man who clearly loves to read, who has a good eye for detail, but who has spent way too much time on style and virtually none on substance.” As for whether or not Franco will finally earn his literary chops with Actors Anonymous, we’ll just have to wait and see.

The trouble that actors often face when branching out into other art forms is a certain amount of cynicism from fans and critics alike that they’re just trying to ride the coattails of their fame and are not really serious about exploring other creative avenues. However, I think such cynicism is less warranted when the branching out is of a literary vein rather than, let’s say, releasing a country album. Although, knowing what we know of Franco, I would not be surprised in the least if the next thing this creative magician pulled out of his hat was a cleverly-titled honky tonk single.