The Sound of No Hands Clapping
A Memoir
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
Young is back with the eagerly awaited follow-up to his account of a hilariously failed attempt to conquer the Manhattan social and professional scene in How to Lose Friends and Alienate People. All the elements that turned Toby's earlier memoir into a bestseller from coast to coast and on both sides of the Atlantic are back, too. Well, some things have changed for Toby-he has married his girlfriend from How to Lose Friends and Alienate People and now has two kids, and he has moved from the Manhattan that treated him none too kindly to London. But Toby remains Toby, and what Graydon Carter of Vanity Fair called Toby's "brown thumb" continues to work its magic, transforming opportunities into cringeworthy debacles and leading to situations that are classic Toby Young territory.
Toby gleefully recounts such dubious journalistic assignments as posing as a patient at a penis-enlargement clinic and as a greeter at a Wal-Mart. He has misadventures in Los Angeles as a screenwriter for films that never quite get made, he's been a contestant on an abysmal reality show that absolutely no one watched, and he has acted in a one-man play that was utterly savaged by the critics. Yes, Toby has become a dutiful husband and a devoted dad, but he's as relentlessly self-sabotaging as ever, with a demonstrated knack for attracting misfortune, publicity-and devoted readers.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
British journalist Young scored big with How to Lose Friends and Influence People, a dishy account of his dire mishaps in the world of glossy New York magazine publishing, and inevitably came to Hollywood's attention. Though his own book was considered, a more lucrative writing offer came from a big-league producer, known here only as " ," or "Mr. Hollywood," who wanted "a biopic about a notorious '70s record producer," who was also "a spectacularly unpleasant human being." This would seem to be a sufficient frame for a follow-up about misadventures in the magazine world, but curiously, it isn't. Instead, Young wanders (literally) all over the map, recounting his experiences on his book tour; as a newlywed and new father; as a screen-writing student, underqualified drama critic and monologist. Naturally, nothing goes right in this unfocused memoir. Young gets in some good anecdotes, but the outcome of the Hollywood adventure is obvious from the start marital bliss is, alas, less compelling than laddishness; an anonymous producer and subject are no match for colorful Graydon Carter and Vanity Fair. 100,000 first printing.