BOOK REVIEW: "Junior" by Macaulay Culkin
Former child-star pens first novel
Blog by Star!Expert, Thursday, April 06, 2006
Junior by Macaulay Culkin
Publisher: Miramax Books
“I am not a writer,” Macaulay Culkin admits, in the introduction to his first novel Junior. He preempts any criticism by saying, “I can read the headlines now. ‘Young man uses connections to get book published.’” He says, “The reviews nearly write themselves. In fact, I wouldn’t be very surprised if these last couple of sentences are the most quoted of any other.”
Now, I wouldn’t fault Macaulay, or anyone, for using any and all connections in the pursuit of publishing a book. But I do question whether Junior would have hit the press had it been written by anyone other than the former child-star. I like Macaulay Culkin. And I really wanted to like this book. But, unfortunately, the only thing that made this read even mildly interesting was who penned it.
As a young man, who could likely live the rest of his days off royalty cheques from his roles in movies like Home Alone and Uncle Buck, Macaulay Culkin doesn’t need to work. He’s said if he chooses to work, it’s on projects that inspire him, projects that give him some sense of personal gratification. In the past few years, after some time out of the limelight, Culkin’s enjoyed somewhat of a comeback. He’s also managed to escape typecasting with intelligent roles such as Mandy Moore’s wheelchair-bound brother in Saved! (2004), a comedic stab at American Christian fundamentalism, as well as a lead in the biopic Party Monster (2003), playing the drug–addled and murderous, NYC club-kid promoter, Michael Alig. I think that’s respectable. So, when Macaulay Culkin sits down to write a book, it’s because he wants to, not because he needs to.
Junior, while packaged as fiction, reads like a thinly-veiled memoir. Junior is a former child star, estranged from his parents, etc. There’s no way to relate Junior to anyone other than Culkin. Commendably, the author attempts to twist the conventional novel format in a way somewhat reminiscent of a Kurt Vonnegut novel or Harmony Korine’s A Crack Up at the Race Riots. Regrettably, the experiment doesn’t pan-out and the reader is left with a mish-mash of short stories, vignettes, lists, wordplay, witticisms, journal entries and drawings.
I’m not sure what, if anything, Culkin expected his readers to take from his, or Junior’s, seemingly random musings. Throughout the book, you get the sense that he doesn’t really care if he reaches his audience at all. In which case, why not just leave the content in its original journals and sketchbooks? Again, had this material been written by some anonymous kid, it would have easily been dismissed as youthful self-indulgence. In that sense, if anything, Junior shows Macaulay Culkin for what he is – a typical 24-year-old kid, (despite his fame and royalty cheques), full of youth’s typical meditations and preoccupations (love lost, alienation, self-discovery). But, atypically, unlike most of us, Macaulay Culkin doesn’t need the money. And, he didn’t need to write this book. So, either way, and this is regrettable, Junior doesn’t feel the least bit consequential.
