The actors in James Franco’s brilliant debut novel include a McDonald’s drive-thru operator who spends his shift trying on accents; an ex-child star recalling a massive beachside bacchanal; hospital volunteers and Midwestern transplants; a vampire flick starlet who discovers a cryptic book written by a famous actor gone AWOL; and the ghost of River Phoenix. Then there’s Franco himself, who prowls backstage, peering out between the lines—before taking the stage with fascinating meditations on his art, along with nightmarish tales of excess. “Hollywood has always been a private club,” he writes. “I open the gates. I say welcome. I say,Look inside.” Told in a dizzying array of styles—from lyric essays and disarming testimonials to hilariously rambling text messages and ghostly footnotes—and loosely modeled on Alcoholics Anonymous’s TwelveSteps and Twelve Traditions, Actors Anonymous is an intense, wild ride into the dark heart of celebrity.

Actors Anonymous

Literature & Fiction

Franco, James

Literary

Little A / New Harvest

Palo Alto is the debut of a powerful new literary voice. Written with an immediacy and sense of place Palo Alto traces the lives of an extended group of teenagers as they experiment with vices of all kinds, struggle with their families and one another, and succumb to self-destructive, often heartless nihilism. Franco presents his characters in all their raw humanity, while at the same time providing insight into the teenage mind. In the classic American tradition of story-cycles such as Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, Palo Alto presents a stark, vivid, disturbing, but, above all, compassionate portrait of lives on the rough fringes of youth.

Palo Alto

Faber&Faber

Faber & Faber Fiction

Considered one of the finest actors of his generation, James Franco is also a multitalented writer and visual artist. Drawing from his experience in film and television work, Franco has produced a visually exciting and thought-provoking body of video works, multimedia installations, and large-scale sculptures.Drawn from the exhibition curated by Alanna Heiss and organized by the Clocktower Gallery, James Franco: The Dangerous Book Four Boys explores themes of childhood and nostalgia, games and destruction.  Each experimental film, suite of drawings, and raw, childlike construction is presented as a window into the artist’s mind. This dense and often diaristic survey reflects Franco’s interest in the contemporary American landscape of adolescence and young adulthood.

The Dangerous Book Four Boys

Arts & Photography

Individual Artists

Skira/Rizzoli

There is a vision of power at the center of James Franco's first chapbook of poems, Strongest of the Litter. Power here is both generative and frightening, self-consuming and bracing. It is the artist's power of self-making. These poems, thoroughly beautiful and spare, have the texture of contending angles. Authenticity can be achieved only through different voices: in an investigation of the range and strength of American art, in homage to Williams Carlos Williams, in awe at the cost to American actors of their art (notably Taylor, Clift, De Niro and Brando), in the celebration and limitation of Kowalski love—"I'm a raging Kowalski whose / Temper can be measured by // How little I can give. / How abusive my reticence." Pervasive in these eloquent poems is the power of memory, the collective memory of Hollywood and specific memories of the poet's own past.

Strongest of the Litter: (The Hollyridge Press Chapbook Series)

Poetry

Hollyridge Press

A bit of shelf ware. Pages are in pristine condition.

Rebel

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

OHWOW

A fiercely vivid collection of stories about troubled California teenagers and misfits--violent and harrowing, from the astonishingly talented actor and artist James Franco. Palo Alto is the debut of a surprising and powerful new literary voice. Written with an immediate sense of place--claustrophobic and ominous--James Franco's collection traces the lives of an extended group of teenagers as they experiment with vices of all kinds, struggle with their families and one another, and succumb to self-destructive, often heartless nihilism. In "Lockheed" a young woman's summer--spent working a dull internship--is suddenly upended by a spectacular incident of violence at a house party. In "American History" a high school freshman attempts to impress a girl during a classroom skit with a realistic portrayal of a slave owner—only to have his feigned bigotry avenged. In "I Could Kill Someone," a lonely teenager buys a gun with the aim of killing his high school tormentor, but begins to wonder about his bully's own inner life. These linked stories, stark, vivid, and disturbing, are a compelling portrait of lives on the rough fringes of youth.

Palo Alto: Stories

United States

Scribner

James Franco the artist-actor-writer-director wears many hats—and in this new body of work, he poses as the characters in his favorite books. This miniature monograph collects 30 postcards, in which Franco reimagines book covers by stepping inside the cover scene. The postcards are prefaced by an essay by Franco about the work, along with a short text from THE THING editors.

THE THING Postcard Book: James Franco

Chronicle Books+

Now a “provocative” and “impressive” (Variety) film from director Gia Coppola (Francis Ford Coppola’s granddaughter)—starring Emma Roberts, James Franco, Nat Wolff, and Val Kilmer—the fiction debut from James Franco that Vogue called “compelling and gutsy.” James Franco’s story collection traces the lives of a group of teenagers as they experiment with vices of all kinds, struggle with their families and one another, and succumb to self-destructive, often heartless nihilism. In “Lockheed” a young woman’s summer—spent working a dull internship—is suddenly upended by a spectacular incident of violence at a house party. In “American History” a high school freshman attempts to impress a girl with a realistic portrayal of a slave owner during a classroom skit—only to have his feigned bigotry avenged. In “I Could Kill Someone,” a lonely teenager buys a gun with the aim of killing his high school tormentor, but begins to wonder about his bully’s own inner life. These “spare and riveting” (O, The Oprah Magazine) stories are a compelling portrait of lives on the rough fringes of youth. Palo Alto is, “a collection of beautifully written stories” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) that “capture with perfect pitch the impossible exhilaration, the inevitable downbeatness, and the pure confusion of being an adolescent” (Elle). Features a bonus essay by James Franco on Gia Coppola's film adaptation.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Franco, James. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Franco, James

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Franco, James. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Actors Anonymous

Palo Alto

Actors Anonymous

The Dangerous Book Four Boys

Strongest of the Litter: (The Hollyridge Press Chapbook Series)

Rebel

Palo Alto: Stories

Palo Alto: Stories

THE THING Postcard Book: James Franco

Palo Alto: Stories