The Sound of No Hands Clapping: A Memoir [Bargain Price] [Hardcover]

Toby Young (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 12, 2006

The highly anticipated sequel to the best-selling-and laugh-out-loud funny How to Lose Friends and Alienate People.When even his friends refer to him in print as "a balding, bug-eyed opportunist with the looks of a beach ball, the charisma of a glove-puppet, and an ego the size of a Hercules supply plane," the odds of Toby Young scoring-in any sense-appear to be slim. But then How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, his account of the five years he spent trying (and failing) to take Manhattan, improbably catapults Toby to bestsellerdom, and his book is translated into twelve languages, including American.Now Tinseltown beckons.After receiving a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity from a big Hollywood producer, Toby sets his sights anew on a high-flying career, this time on the West Coast. But it doesn't take long for Toby's fabled "brown thumb" and self-sabotaging instincts to reassert themselves. On the home front, though, things seem to be looking up: Toby manages to persuade his girlfriend to marry him and move to Los Angeles-but then she decides to abandon her promising legal career in order to become a fulltime homemaker . . . and mother. Toby's increasingly hapless attempts to pursue a glamorous showbiz career while buried in diapers will strike a chord with all modern fathers struggling to find the right work/life balance . . . and with their utterly exasperated wives.Failure-and fatherhood-have never been funnier.

--This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

Editorial Reviews

From 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.(July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

In the best-selling How to Lose Friends & Alienate People (2002), British journalist Young hilariously tracked his rise and fall in the New York media world. After that debacle, he turned his attention to L.A., where he endured a trial-and-error period attempting to be a Hollywood screenwriter. Young tackled Tinseltown looking for glamour, but what he found had more to do with his personal and domestic life than his career. His screenwriting remembrances are interspersed with recollections of family life, from his engagement and marriage to his first child and the process of getting used to fatherhood. Alas, Hollywood didn't pan out, and his "return to London was a bitter disappointment." But readers won't be disappointed with this warm, funny, self-effacing memoir, which will appeal to anyone who has ever tried to accomplish anything--and that amounts to all of us. Expect part 2 of Young's story to follow its predecessor onto the best-seller lists. Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press (June 12, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1616842881
• ISBN-13: 978-1616842888
• ASIN: B000NJ0T3Q
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.9 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,221,431 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

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Getting In and Out of the Hollywood Business, August 25, 2006

By 

M. JEFFREY MCMAHON "herculodge" (Torrance, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: The Sound of No Hands Clapping: A Memoir (Hardcover)

We learn in this witty self-deprecating memoir that it is vulgar and uncool to say "the Industry" when referring to Hollywood films; we must say "the Business." This is one of many funny lessons Toby Young learns when, minding his own business in London, he gets a strange call from a mysterious unnamed Hollywood producer who, having read Toby Young's first book How To Lose Friends And Alienate People, wants Young to write a screenplay about an obscure entertainment figure. Enticed at the prospect of making millions in Hollywood, Young disgruntles his new wife with his chimera quest. The book alternates between Young's Hollywood fiascos and his marital tumult, including the birth of of his first child. The most priceless moments are his correspondences with his friend, the Hollywood writer Rob Young, who teaches him, among other things, how to take a Business Lunch and the "vast repertoire of hand gestures" needed for equals, higher ups, and super bigwigs. These funny moments are part of Young's growing-up process as he becomes disenchanted with the Hollywood Beast. This has the same self-deprecating humor as his first book. For another memoir of disenchantment, check out The Working Stiff's Manifesto by Iaian Levison.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars No Clapping Indeed, June 12, 2009

A Kid's Review

This review is from: The Sound of No Hands Clapping (Kindle Edition)

Mr. Young is apparently under the misapprehension that being self-consciously self-conscious about being unfunny or narcissistic makes things funny or selfless. As in: Let me tell you in excruciating detail about how unfunny I was the wedding/meeting/party. Let me repeat every arrogant, boorish syllable. Isn't that funny? No. Well, it could have been, in the hands of a writer of great skill and delicate craft, not Mr. Young.

Much of the book is concerned with his first memoir "How to Lose Friends and Alienate People." He discusses the book's writing, the selling, the attempts to turn it into a play and a movie ad nauseum (its title is mentioned more than 150 times). He let's you know how funny people thought it was, how people couldn't believe that he took such an unlikable character, himself, and made the reader like him. One could surmise he is trying to pull a slightly older rabbit out of the same hat here. He fails.

He shows when he ought to tell, and tells when he ought to show. He spends nearly the entire book convincing us that he is a "shallow, narcissistic, fool." And we believe him. When he then tells us what nice, thoughtful husband and father he has become in a final epiphanic story near the end, it's a pill too large, bitter, and boring to swallow.

He is also apparently under the misapprehension that he has a book about trying to write a screenplay. He doesn't. He has a three or four meetings with a Hollywood bigwig (accounting for about 15% of the book), interspersed his meandering, useless, discourses on marriage, pregnancy and adulthood, that are, at their best, boring, but are more often merely rehashes of mid-80's style observational humor akin to airline food jokes. He recapitulates conversations, inner monologues, and, incredibly, unexpurgated, tedious email exchanges.

The book's few high moments come only when he is quoting from the library of books and articles he has read, culled from the pens of his betters.

In the last dash to the end, I found myself grinding my teeth with each passing paragraph, desperate to give a chance to redeem himself. He doesn't.

Though I am sure he will tell us otherwise in his next book.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Status Anxiety - but how genuine?, July 13, 2008

By 

Sirin (London, UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Sound of No Hands Clapping: A Memoir (Hardcover)

Toby Young is still starstruck. Following on from his ill fated adventures at society gloss mag, Vanity Fair in Manhattan, chronicled in How to Lose Friends and Alienate People (the movie based on that coming out later this year), Toby returns to London with aspirations to make it as a screenwriter.

Unfortunately for Toby, he lacks either the talent or the dedication to achieve genuine success. On the cusp of fatherhood, he muses greatly on the 'pram in the hall' theory of literature, how his family commitments will deny him the time to write, even though he has no great literary ideas anyway - the sure fire symptoms of a wannabe writer who sure as hell ain't gonna make it. Toby sort of knows this, and compensates by being a brat in the media establishment with a hysterical penchant for getting people's backs up and saying the wrong thing.

In this volume, Toby is older and wiser, and his voice in self deprecating status anxiety hits a nice tone (some great riffs, such as when his wife drags him away by the ear from a mid air champagne rendezvous with Gordon Ramsay) . The only trouble is - now that he is so good at it, can he really continue to parlay this brand of loser lit and not make it seem affected?

He is truly mingling with the high life now, with movie on the way. As Boris Johnson (one of the many media luminaries portrayed in this book) said, when removing his 'no life' Spectator column, the jig on that is well and truly up.