James Franco's Short Story Is Blue-Collar, Earnest, Exactly What We Expected

You know when you’re eighteen and taking your first college fiction class, and a few months in, you really hit your stride? This is some next level shit, you think. It’s got drugs, travel, apathetic youth – it has people talking like people. And in a really simple way. Why haven’t people thought of that? This is going to blow the lid off, you think.

Well, James Franco, Master of Fine Arts, seems to feel the same way. This month, Esquire published a story of his, originally written for his Columbia University MFA writing workshop (a totally real and worthwhile thing to do with one hundred thousand dollars). Needless to say, every blogger on teh webz got pretty shouty about it. And why wouldn’t they? We all occasionally wish our bad fiction upon Esquire.

What's it about? Think of James Franco. Then think of what he'd write a story about. Yeah - it's that:

I wish I was Mexican, or Hebrew, I mean Jewish, I mean Israeli, or Mexican Jewish, or Mexican Jewish gay, because it can be so boring being you sometimes, and if you were the most special thing like that, it could be really great, but maybe some people say the same thing about you, and you want to tell those people: "No, you're stupid, it's no fun being me."

Boom! Franco just took you there. But in all seriousness, what did you expect from him? Of course James Franco wrote a heartfelt road trip-through-the-desert story with a lot of dumb cursing. Of course it kind of sucks. So what? It might even make me like him more because it matches what I already think about him: he’s sincere guy that tries too hard and is probably into talking about Pablo Escobar. We should let him do whatever he wants to do, which apparently is imparting us with some of his blue-collar wisdom of the American Southwest through the use of a well-placed “puta.”