Customer Reviews

Bright Young Things: New York

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(15)

 

 

You know, my grandmother always taught me that wealth and success were blessings to be appreciated and contemplated in private, and to be grateful for because they are distributed unequally and can disappear at any time. I have to wonder what these people's families taught them, besides the lie that money makes you important and you have this wealth because you are somehow just better than other people. The vulgarity and transparent social ambition of the participants in this book just make the whole exercise in narcissism that much more lame. The bad design, bad attitudes, bad values, and ignorance on display here show a real waste of the doubtless costly education lavished on these children of vanity and greed. They would be pitiable if they weren't so arrogant.

And their apartments are mostly just really ugly.

Normally I enjoy this kind of thing, but this book is embarassing. Who sets the trends? Not these people. Cast a net over a random crowd in New York City and you would be hard pressed to come up with a more under-acheiving, untalented bunch. Stylish? Even the photographer seems hard pressed for material. Images and decors are surprisingly banal, substandard even for the magazines this big, expensive book resembles. The text can only have been generated by under-educated robots running PR programs. Don't they have spell check?

My husband and I know most of these people from college and the New York party circuit and let me tell you this book is a joke! If you think that these women really have "careers" or grace and style of their own then we have a bridge in this town which you might be interested in purchasing to go along with your copy of this book...Brooke is preying on their vanities and insecurities in order to boost her profile-although from the quality of her writing you can tell that she is not much more intelligent than the BYT's. Her subjects are fun people however to admire them would be not only inappropriate but foolish-let's just say I laughed so hard, this book should listed under "humour".

I tried to come up with all sorts of ways to poke fun at the pretentiousness of this book, but really, what's the point? If beautiful people in New York City want to create a volume in which they can feature other beautiful people, their beautiful homes and beautiful families, and write glowingly about the beautiful lives they lead, and then sell it to themselves, the envious, and the just plain nosy, who am I to complain?

Far more risible is the introduction by William Norwich, in which "these meritocrats -- don't call them aristocrats" are painted not only as the apotheosis of style, but also of social concern, enlightened world view, forward-looking design, and folks-next-door approachability. In fact, three quarters of these "meritocrats" I'd never heard of before ... and most of those whose names I recognized (Guinness, Lauder, Herrera, another Lauder, Von Furstenburg [and one of the Miller sisters], Hermès, etc.) came more from their families' prosperity and fame than from the meritocratic achievements of the individuals themselves.

Still, the pictures are pretty enough, and the writing (apart from Norwich's) unobjectionable. And maybe it wasn't the subjects' fault they showed up in this embarrassing book. If one of my friends called up and said she was assembling a picture book of obscure Seattle book reviewers and wanted me in it, I might oblige her just out of friendship. But I'd make sure not to leave my copy sitting around where visitors could see it.

In all, this title has a certain voyeuristic value, from the pre-September 11 era. But I hope those of us outside the rarified little world of New York Society don't take it for a lot more than that.

All of the disgusting things you may have heard about this book are true. But it's as irresistible as any guilty pleasure. Brooke puts the CAMP in O'Campo. If there indeed was an editor he/she must have only been looking at the pretty pictures and not the words. The tacky text with the repeated misspellings makes it all the richer. Get the 1st edition before they are corrected and own a collector's piece your friends will envy you for. Here's the clincher: This book is an absolute essential as a companion to "Flophouse: Life on the Bowery" as two artifacts that capture the contradictory essence of NYC 2000.

I shudder to think that anyone would want to purchase this book. Fortunately, I found it at the local library. These "Bright Young Things" come off as Young Dim-wits. De Ocampo proves that one does not need talent or decorating sense to get a book published. . .one only needs the right connections, the "right friends" and a trust fund.

As for those readers who see this as a work of high camp. I'd hate to think that "camp" has fallen this low.

Is this what it means to have friends in high places? In light of what has been happening with the Martha Stewart, Sam Waksal and Peter Bacanovic drama, this book is particularly au courant.Peter's interiors and editorial comments are as vapid, insipid and slippery as he has proven himself to be. The sheer fact that these types opened their homes to fellow shallow socialite Brooke De Ocampo's camera clearly shows us how little they all have to offer.

Pity.

It is one thing to write a book (if one can call a horrendously mispelled written work a "book") about society men and women, a topic we can all appreciate, even for the sake of curiosity. But it is quite another to write a book about your friends, state in the preface that they are all accomplished, call them "Bright Young Things" and then chronicle the frivolous goings-on of the rich and, only in SOME cases, beautiful.

Next time ... just call it like it is: W magazine in book form and we will all love it for it's trivialities. But please don't pretend it is anything more than that.

Better luck next time.

This book attests to what paying a publicist can do for book sales. I bought the book because I had heard about it, and was sorely disappointed when I opened the cover. Voila! A bunch of nobodys who've done nothing in their wealthy lives to merit being in a book. Either they were friendly with the author or merely flattered when asked to be photographed for the book. The photographs are fine, in and of themselves, but the subjects leave something to be desired. The text is as light weight as souffle... the book would lose nothing without it. Indeed, this is the priciest non-book I've ever seen. Don't be fooled by the hype. Trust me, the only "Bright" thing about this book is the title which Ms. De Ocampo unfortunately lifted from another author's prior book. Shame on Assouline for publishing such tripe. They should have stopped publishing books after their exquisite David Seidner's Portraits. Now that was book-worthy. And Laurence's Private Dreams of Public People.

The people featured within these wasted pages are overprivileged, self-absorbed trustafundians or super-climbers (like Ocampo herself) getting glory for doing nothing of any real value for society. Pity trees had to fall to provide paper on which to print this vapid nonsense!! Just glad I didn't buy it (was an ill-guided gift).

The writing is inferior to that of a 5th grader in public school, no more!! One would think O'Campo could have hired a decent ghost writer to do it for her!