In a chain of highly-bloggable events, Hollywood icon James Franco recently made several public responses to local artist/writer/educator Sean Joseph Patrick Carney's book of erotic fan fiction, Fucking James Franco.

For an idea of how the book reads, there's this little gem that imagines a yiffy Franco on the set of 127 Hours:

With his left hand, James grabbed some pebbles from a surrounding ledge and thrust them down his pants. It was time to get dirty and rough, time to dive into the grime that this role required. He felt filthy, almost excessively and graphically non-monogamous. As if he had his hand up Hudson’s ass while simultaneously fucking Hudson’s shorter, less endowed friends. With gravel in his pants, he slapped the underside of the rock and rubbed up against it. He wondered if the friction would create a crack, if a fissure would form and break off the portion that trapped his hand.

and here's Franco's latest response to the book:

and Carney's subsequent retort:

To understand what all this means, click past the jump.

Written by artists from around the country and composed entirely of imaginary sexual encounters with the titular actor, Fucking James Franco was first announced last November via the project's more-successful-than-average Kickstarter.

From a bird's-eye view, the book could be seen as a sort of initiation into the art world. It reflects both the excitement and the eye-rolling that surrounded Franco's very-public stabs at various artistic mediums: pieces of fiction in Esquire, the establishment of his web-based Museum of Non-Visible Art, and his experimentation with real-space exhibitions.

Cultural climate aside, shortly after the Kickstarter launched, news of Fucking James Franco spread far and wide by way of the A/V Club, Gawker, Jezebel, and others.

But in the flurry of public interest, one big question lingered: Would word of Carney's project reach Franco himself, and if so, would the actor acknowledge it?

That question was first answered neutrally back in March, with an image posted to Franco's WhoSay account.

Then, a few weeks later, the tone shifted when Franco spoke of Fucking James Franco in a Hollywood Reporter interview regarding the actor's new film, Francophrenia (in case you were wondering, Francophrenia is an actor-unwillingly-transforms-into-the-role-he's-playing story, repurposing behind-the-scenes footage from the making of Franco's stint on General Hospital as a maniacal artist named “Franco”). In the interview, Franco says Carney's book is piggy-backing on his celebrity:

... there's this group of I guess art students or something in Oregon that have just put out this book called Fucking James Franco— and to me it feels like they're pretending to be critical of this public persona that's called James Franco but they're also using it to serve themselves...

He's basically right, but Carney says there's more to it.

“When The Hollywood Reporter interview first dropped and [Franco] seemed irked by the project, I was initially confused,” writes Carney in an email. “Our intention in developing [the book] took into account his own performative public persona and we figured that he'd be the the singular celebrity icon slash budding art star who would find it both amusing and germane towards possible future iterations.”

Franco's reaction did seem kind of strange. After all, the actor's celebrity has propelled his entry-level art, writing, and various self-referential projects like Francophrenia to the forefront of visibility. And if it's okay for Franco to use his celebrity in order to get his work in front of people, why can't someone like Carney do the same? Moreover, why not embrace the opportunity to fully explore the celebrity phenomenon, if that's in fact the purpose of Franco's growing list of persona-parsing projects?

It appears that Franco might've considered this line of thinking, for a week after the Hollywood Reporter piece ran, he uploaded this:

To clarify what you just saw, that's Franco screen-printing the cover of Carney's book, over and over and over. The gesture is reminiscent of the queer and feminist toolbox, in which language classically considered disparaging is embraced in order to reclaim power over one's identity. That little smirk he gives while adding his fresh print to the drying dozens says it all: Let's do this Carney. Art fight!

“Naturally, we responded in an appropriate fashion,” writes Carney. His response? This:

The above print is a glossy rendition of Franco's hand-drawn iteration of the Fucking James Franco book jacket.

“The image that he's printing was designed by Gary Robbins of Container Corps,” writes Carney, “so there's no reason that Gary and I can't snag his hand drawn version of it and reproduce them.”

Seems fair.

“Wherever this feedback loop goes, I'm along for the ride.”

Ball's in your court, Franco.