How to Lose Friends & Alienate People [Hardcover]

Toby Young (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 2, 2002

In 1995 high-flying British journalist Toby Young left London for New York to become a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. Other Brits had taken Manhattan-Alistair Cooke then, Anna Wintour now-so why couldn't he? But things didn't quite go according to plan. Within the space of two years he was fired from Vanity Fair, banned from the most fashionable bar in the city, and couldn't get a date for love or money. Even the local AA group wanted nothing to do with him. How to Lose Friends and Alienate People is Toby Young's hilarious account of the five years he spent looking for love in all the wrong places and steadily working his way down the New York food chain, from glossy magazine editor to crash-test dummy for interactive sex toys. But it's more than "the longest self-deprecating joke since the complete works of Woody Allen" (Sunday Times); it's also a seditious attack on the culture of celebrity from inside the belly of the beast. And there's even a happy ending, as Toby Young marries-"for proper, noncynical reasons," as he puts it-the woman of his dreams. "Some people are lucky enough to stumble across the right path straight away; most of us only discover what the right one is by going down the wrong one first."BEFORE PUBLICATION: "I'll rot in hell before I give that little bastard a quote for his book."-Julie Burchill AFTER PUBLICATION: "A relentlessly brilliant book-a What Makes Sammy Run for the twenty-first century…the funniest, cleverest, most touching new book I've read for as long as I can remember."-Julie Burchill, The Spectator

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The appeal of journalist Young's memoir is his willingness to skewer himself as savagely as he does his acquaintances and colleagues. The self-portrait is rarely flattering and sometimes repellent, but carries a startling ring of truth. Young targets Manhattan's superficial social scene and gives a slashing insider's view of Vanity Fair and its parent company, Cond‚ Nast. Consumed with the desire to be "somebody," Young is hired by editor Graydon Carter and unwittingly offends everyone he seeks to impress. He learns that journalists must have "a plausible manner, rat-like cunning and a little literary ability," and he encounters a caste system so rigid that if an important editor trips and falls, etiquette dictates to leave her on the floor and walk on, rather than offer assistance or directly address her. Young's description of his efforts to crash Oscar parties is an appallingly accurate picture of wannabes whose identity depends on the celebrities they cultivate. He's amusingly perceptive in his analyses of women whose motive for marrying prominent men is to impress other women; this jealousy is brilliantly summed up by Gore Vidal's comment, "Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little." British-born Young, who has also been fired from the Times of London and the Guardian, paints Carter as a fascinatingly complex individual, capable of devastating employees or helping them face dire health problems. He also includes intriguing profiles of power couple Tina Brown and Harry Evans, and Sex and the City creator Candace Bushnell. What keeps readers on Young's side is his courage to keep fighting, even when confronted by publicist Peggy Siegal's withering line, "I have no respect for writers. They never make money. They're like poor people looking in the windows."
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Inspired by Hollywood classics such as The Front Page, British writer Young longed to move to New York and work as a journalist for a glossy magazine, hobnobbing with the rich and famous. He jumps at the chance for a tryout with Vanity Fair magazine and eventually lands a tenuous position. But he's disappointed to learn that, compared with British reporters, American journalists are sycophants, slavering over celebrities and cozying up to publicists. Still, because he is so enamored of New York, he thoroughly enjoys his stay. Eventually, however, his admittedly juvenile pranks and failure to adapt to the culture, as well as his excessive drinking, end his career at Vanity Fair. Now on the fringes, freelancing for British publications, he manages to offend the powerful media couple Tina Brown and Harry Evans, triggering a lawsuit that is later dropped. But the contretemps actually helps to boost his career. This thoroughly humorous memoir provides a scathing portrait of the egomaniacal world of New York media and an insightful look at modern American celebrity culture. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press (July 2, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 030681188X
• ISBN-13: 978-0306811883
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (97 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #478,070 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I tried to enter some facts about myself here, but every time I hit "Save Changes" I got an error message saying, "The text entered may not contain profanity." It didn't, but no matter how many suspect words I deleted, I got the same error message. I guess my life is such a godawful mess, that merely trying to describe it constitutes a "profanity". If anyone's interested, they can check out my Wikipedia entry.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

60 of 67 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bitter, sad, occasionally hilarious but never boring, July 13, 2002

By 

David Ljunggren (Ottawa, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: How to Lose Friends & Alienate People (Hardcover)

It is very rare these days that I find a book engrossing enough to read in one sitting and which also makes me laugh out loud. Toby Young, who has an unerring ability to focus on his own shortcomings, does an excellent job of explaining exactly how not to get on in New York. His waggish personality, a healthy appetite for drink and a large stock of off-colour jokes -- all attributes which would serve you well as a journalist in London -- ensure he makes a total mess of pretty much everything he does in Manhattan, the mothership of all that is politically correct in the United States. Indeed, when Vanity Fair boss Graydon Carter fires Young, he tells our hapless hero that he has a brown thumb. "Everything you touch turns to ****," he explains with a laugh. Young is the squarest of pegs in a world where all the holes are round and to make matters worse, a friend of his who went to Los Angeles at the same time strikes immediate and lucrative success. Young is also very funny about his total lack of success with American women, largely because they quickly realise he is broke (and has quite a few complexes, as well as an impressively large collection of appalling pick-up lines). Two-thirds of the way through, the book suddenly becomes more serious as Young realises he has hit rock bottom and starts groping for a way out. To say much more would give too much away but it's well worth sticking through to the end.

24 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Plausible, cunning, literary: Brit humor at its driest, July 12, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: How to Lose Friends & Alienate People (Hardcover)

What a clever book. Ignore the provocative title - Brits are trained from birth to jettison friends and loved ones and skilled alienation is in their DNA. (I think it's also stipulated in the Magna Carta).

This is the witty memoir to jolt us out of Alertness Fatigue and all the government-induced 9/11 jitters essential to keep us focused on Saddam-bashing.

Here's this self-effacing Brit arriving in the Big Bagel to take Condé Nast by storm and canoodle with the celebs - and he totally flubs it on every front. Any self-respecting dude would pack up and go sell matches down Nacogdoches way, but not them blue-bloods. The Honorable Toby Young pauses only to fire up the word processor and - shazam - he's got a hot book out of it that also wreaks hilarious revenge on those who rejoiced in his downfall in the first place.

The book amuses wherever it falls open: the list of words banned by the Canuck airforce brat editor of 'Vanity Fair', Graydon 'Powerstrut' Carter; Young's brilliant idea for an profile of ubiquitous partygoer Jay McInerney as a notorious recluse à la Salinger or Pynchon; belletrist GW's winning way with the "clipboard Nazis" at the Bowery Bar; the major babes in the C-Nast elevators, sizing each other up "with the cold-blooded hostility of professional athletes", pouncing on any perceived fashion disaster with disapproving comments ranging "from the fairly mild - 'Aggressive choice!' - to the outright rude - 'It ain't working, honey.'"

"Alienate" abounds in such gems, delivered with a sure pen and sharpest ear and with that killer diffidence that makes your upper class Oxford type so dangerous to turn one's back on.

Nor is it just a catalog of TY's pathetic inability to bed any of this great country's Grade 1 beauties. Just when you think he's clowning, out comes Tocqueville from the bottom of the
deck and it's spot-on stuff - like that famed observation that "I do not know any country where, in general, less independence of mind and genuine freedom of discussion reign than in America." Ouch, but also let him try mouthing that around the 'Lonely Pines Grill & Bar' ...

Don't take my word for it: check out "HLFAP" at the library or your local brick n mortar and see if you can stop browsing or grinning. Nice one, Mister Young.

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars gossip and philosophy, all in one fun read, July 2, 2002

By 

FizzyBlonde - See all my reviews

This review is from: How to Lose Friends & Alienate People (Hardcover)

Toby Young manages to combine gossip, farce and social commentary in one terrifically well written book. While he makes sport of many famous media folk, he doesn't spare himself. This book reads like a primer on how NOT to behave in media circles, with many laugh out loud passages detailing Young's spectacular social and professional blunders. If you are extremely politically correct, this is not the book for you. And if you take offense at any critiques of the American way of life, you won't exactly see eye to eye with Young. I found the book insightful and refreshing, especially during this period of too often blind patriotism. Young writes about Graydon Carter and Alexis deTocqueville with equal facility, and manages to make all of it interesting. You start out thinking Young is a big jerk, but by the end, he's won you over.