paper towns. john green. (276)

i decided to read paper towns, because there is a panel discussion about it at bookcon.  i think it conflicts with a panel i actually want to see, but decided to read it, just in case i catch the panel.  i should also add that i think the panel is for the film based on the book.

so i read, watched, and loved the fault in our stars, however, the same can not be said for paper towns.  to be completely honest, they shouldn't have turned it into a movie.  the storyline is not that interesting and the characters are not as likable.  plus i just watched the trailer and it looks horrible.  maybe its because i know the ending, but it seems like a lot of hype for a lame ending.  

and i need to read the rest of his books, but if the rest of his books are like paper towns, it might be safe to say that green is a one hit wonder.

paper towns is like the poor man's the virgin suicides.  the obsessive neighbor, untoucable free spirited girl, but no interesting chronicles of her life and definitely none of the deep and insightful coming of age knowlege.

the novel is told from the point of view of q .  he has spent his life, all 17 years of it (i think), admiring and loving his neighbor margo roth spiegelman from afar.  they used to be best friend, their defining moment of friendship was when they found a dead body at age 9.  margo became a popular party girl while q became a nerd that hung out with band kids.  i am not hating, q and i would have ran in the same circles, if we went to high school together.  i liked his friend radar especially due to its obsession with updating a wikipedia-esque website, but ben was annoying and i would have hated him in real life.

any hoot, margo discovered her boyfriend was cheating on her and goes on this crazy revenge spree and enlisted the help of q.  margo gave q a talk about paper towns and how people are fake and not as the appear. the next day she disappeared.

q was worried that she committed suicide (i have to admit by the end i wish that she had.) he believed that she left him clues to find her.  it started with a woody guthrie picture (quick sidenote as i was reading about guthrie's poster and his guitar that read "this machine kills facists." i was like where have i read that? and i remember that steve martin's memoir mentioned it as well.) and leads him to developments that were never completed.

q did a lot of bad searching for margo, seriously how did he not realize that those holes in the wall were left by marks on a map?!?! he spent a lot of time overanalyzing leaves of grass, i love whitman but green was trying to hard there.  q discovered he is capable

of being adventurous, realized he put margo on a pedestal.  oh and he missed out on alot of partying before graduation.

in the end, he learned (and i did as well, maybe the only great thing to happen from reading this) that a paper town was a fake town that map makers made up and placed on maps to discover copyright infringement.  and on a paper town near nyc, there was a post about the population being one until some date.  which turned out to be the day after graduation, but since it took 22 hours to drove, q missed his graduation.

q and his friends (btw another big critique is that it lacey and ben as a couple happened really quickly!) go on a road trip.  and though fun, they were really geeky about it, i mean really would teens be that good about planning to the minute?

anyway, they found margo.  she didn't commit suicide but she was a bitch.  she and q resolved life, realizing that they both cared for these ideas of each other but not that actual person.  it was supposed to be deep but i felt like green was trying to hard.

in the end, i was disappointed by the ending, because after all of q's effort, margo was still a beezy.  and i know they talked it out but still it seemed like a big waste of time.  though i guess q did grow as a person.

all in all, this book was lame.

palo alto. james franco. (127)

i read online that james franco was doing a fundraiser, kinda like kickstarter but not, to turn his collection of short stories, "palo alto" into a movie.  

before i go on, quick rant about celebrities doing kickstarters.  seriously?!?! doesn't the general public give you enough money by watching your movies and tv shows?  i mean don't you already get paid a ridiculous amount of money for acting yet you are begging common folk for money?  fund your own projects, you can afford it!

back to "palo alto", though i didn't agree with his fundraising, i was excited about reading his work.  i admire his acting and he seems to be pretty intelligent and cultured.  he did go to UCLA and he sat with marina abramovic during her piece "the artist is present" (he was featured in the doc).  so i had pretty high expectations for his writing, but his fundraiser should have been a red flag.

i mean it did seem odd that james franco would have to do a kickstarter with all of his hollywood success but this collection of stories was horrible.  so bad that its no wonder he couldn't find anyone in hollywood to back it, you would have to be an idiot to.  it was bad.  it was like a sad attempt to be "jesus' son" but whereas denis johnson has talent and a way with words, franco has nothing.

i mean i knew it was going to be horrible after reading the first line of the first story, "halloween":

ten years ago, my sophomore year in high school, i killed a woman on halloween.

i swear to god, i am not making this up.  that was the first line.  it reminded me of that "girls" episode when hannah goes to the reading for her old professor and she reads that poorly-written and forced story about her online boyfriend dying.  and her first line is about him dying and she doesn't get a reaction so she repeats the line about him dying assuming people didn't catch it the first time.  so embarrassing.  in my head, i imagined franco repeating "killed" for a reaction and for effect.  

so that line set the tone for the rest of the stories and after that i couldn't take anything seriously.  everything felt forced.  i know what franco was trying to write, he wanted to create some great beat manifesto for generation y but sadly didn't come close.  i mean franco did capture the pretentious ignorance of gen y hipsters.  it was shocking yet lacked any real depth or edge.  it was all self-righteous intensity, kinda like hipsters.  franco's characters were soulless druggies yet would namecheck kerouac, faulkner, and hemingway.  it was as if the mention of their names would result in literary greatness, instead franco just came off like a wannabe beat.

his characters were  bad people, i was disgusted by everything i had read in  the story.  they were bad just for the shock value versus finding a deeper truth.  it was full of lines that i am sure franco wanted his readers' minds to explode as they read but everything was overdone and cliché.

franco's stories were filled with bad stereotypes as well.  the second story is the tale of girl who is . . . good at math!  what girls can't be good at math?!?!  or the slutty asian girl who will love you long time.  there was also a lot of half breeds and even a mormon.  but a mormon who knows nothing about scriptures (mormons, even the bad ones can discuss scriptures).  and just way too many bat shitty crazy boys with too much time and drugs on their hands.

and i mean i get wayward youth, i enjoyed "a clockwork orange" and "trainspotting".  i revered sal paradise.  but there was nothing enjoyable or enlightening about the reckless youth of "palo alto".  it was so bad that i now have a better appreciation for "jesus' son".

but i will add i did enjoy one thing.  i genuinely enjoyed franco's mention of the children books author bill peet.  i actually checked out a handful of his books because they are alluded to in a story.  though i did not believe anyone would let a druggie do service hours at a library.  

but in the end, i am glad i read "palo alto" because now i won't waste my money to help fund a film version or pay for a movie ticket to see it.