How To Lose Friends And Alienate People: A Memoir

Toby Young has written a valuable book here, full of insight and pertinent observations. Someone said in a review on this website that they didn't laugh out loud once. I did, several times. It's funny, because Toby makes fun of himself.

But he stays true to his inner nature, and stands against the forces of social society in the New York publishing world.

Toby found that the fashion world, at least with respect to publishing, was based on a religious attitude, a "religion I couldn't take seriously." This religion is based, essentially, on chasing new fads. This isn't surprising, since the publishing world must earn its nickel by selling "news" to the public. It's the same with newspapers in general.

But, as Young cites Tocqueville, "It's an extreme form of materialism....an obsession with bodily pleasures at the expense of the immortal soul." Well, Toby was a non-believer in the Conde Nast world, but from my own perspective, his indictment of the materialistic cravings there could apply all over the country. In fact, it seems that it's inherent in capitalism itself, that is, the pursuit of gain by exchanging value for value. It doesn't hurt the "newness priests" to invent something as new as often as possible.

Toby made many good points like this. He paints himself as a loser and an outsider, and so he probably was, but he finds love in the end and returns to his London home.

I learned much from this book, and I could identify with Toby Young as an outsider and non-believer. Many organizations have the same insider/outsider bifurcation, and those who don't worship in the right way may be ex-communicated pretty quickly.

Toby also addresses the matter of sibling rivalry and competition following us throughout our lives. The book has an index, a rarity these days, and I'm using it right now to find a quote by Gore Vidal, as follows: "Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little." Toby adds: "This, in turn explains why we feel a sudden rush of elation on hearing about some terrible calamity that has befallen one of our friends."

And you know, I'm that way, too, but I always believed that I was the only one and had to do everything I could to hide such anti-social feelings. It helped to read this exposition: sibling rivalry throughout life is not that uncommon.

Diximus.

Some one wrote in their review that they'd paid $1.00 for the book. YOU PAID TOO MUCH. The endless "school of hard knocks" routine is beyond tiresome, the crowd Toby longs to be included in is obligingly repulsive and what we're left with is wishing there were some way to return the book for a full refund in order to make a contribution to Toby's permanent extradition from the literary world.

Let's face it, the appeal of this book is to get a glimpse into the dirty world of celebrity and a glimpse inside the back-stabbing and self-centered society of the publishing world. Well, Toby Young delivers on the self-centered world, especially through his unsympathetic, egocentric and obnoxious self. This book turns out to be about an annoying writer and his rise and fall in the publishing world. Though Young does offer glimpses into the world of publishing and introduces some interesting facts, even these rare gems come across as Young boasting, or making an effort to prove that he's intelligent.

While reading this book, rather than finding an expose into an interesting world, I found an expose of someone I would have no desire to ever meet in person and who I wouldn't trust as far as I could throw him. If he were a horribly dispicable person it would have been far more interesting. Instead, he's just your average every day dispicable person who seems to have always wanted to make his own rules but found that he had to play by others' rules and he wants sympathy for that.

That said, I had to give it three stars because I did finish it, though I nearly put it down for good many times...besides, it got me annoyed enough to put this much thought into it, so there must be some worth there. Perhaps it's meant more for the esoteric world of those in publishing?

I guess it's easier to like a memoir if you like the writer, but unfortunately, Toby Young appears to be 1) shallow as hell, and 2) harboring delusions of grandeur. Not an attractive combo. Remind me again why I would want to read about him?

This is an enjoyable book, although I take issue with Young's obsession with the good old days of New York journalism. Miniver Cheevy, anyone? On the other hand, by most accounts the Vicious Circle was full of self-absorbed, backbiting alcoholics, so he would probably fit right in.
One funny thing is that he seems to think he has skewered Graydon Carter but Carter actually comes off looking good, like a relatively decent human being, given the context.