An actor treads the line between reality and fiction every time he plays
a part, and for James Franco, that exploration isn't limited to the
screen--he's also a visual artist with several exhibitions under his
belt as well as the author of the widely praised story collection Palo
Alto. In A California Childhood he plays with the concept of memoir
through personal snapshots, sketches, paintings, poems, and stories. "I
was born in 1978 at Stanford Hospital and spent my first eighteen years
in a single house at the end of a cul-de-sac in Palo Alto," Franco
writes in his introduction. Steve Jobs's daughter and the grandson of
one of the Hewlett-Packard founders may have both been in his graduating
class, but just across the freeway from his home turf lay East Palo
Alto, which in 1992 had the highest murder rate per capita in the
country. For Franco, the terrain of his upbringing is fraught with the
complication of a city divided. But within that diversity, universal
aspects of adolescence rise to the surface, and those are the subjects
at the heart of Franco's work. Ultimately this is a portrait of a
childhood brightened by California sunshine, but with trouble waiting in
the shadows. At turns funny, dark, and emotional, the journey of this
book delivers an undeniable immediacy. And at the end, the reader is
left wondering just where the boundary lies between Franco's art and his
true life.
