Customer Reviews

The Sound of No Hands Clapping: A Memoir

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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.

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.

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.

I stopped by to check up on some details about one of my favorite memoirs and was stunned to see others were not raving. Huh? This is a wonderful book about coming of age, or more accurately "launching" which is the period after coming of age when human beings have to figure out how to adults. I think that the self-consciousness of the memoir works beautifully. As a witty, media savvy writer, he is doing a send-up of himself, a brilliant play on his own journey. Reading between the lines, there are beautiful elements of character arc, as he gradually grows beyond his delusion that he is the only person who matters, and takes steps toward becoming a responsible father and husband.

As an aspiring writer myself, I am fascinated by the extent that people will reach in order to achieve some level of success and fame. In essence, all writers are in the business of fame, and so is the new wave social-media junkies. While we are out looking for hits to our blog or our Facebook page, it is informative to see how someone in the big time pursues the same goals.

Cheers to the author. I hope his adult life is as interesting as the pursuit of becoming an adult was.

While not quite at the level of "How to Lose Friends and Alienate People," I found myself laughing out loud quite a few times while reading this one. However, I must say I was almost disappointed to see Toby becoming somewhat more of a nice guy towards the end!

Boring, not as good as the first one. Would make you think the first one was a bore too. Sorry Toby.

After reading first book, "how to Lose friends ..." Disappointed with second book from Toby Young. thru out book references to "my First" book. and what was humorous in his first becomes annoying in the second.

The title riffs off the famous Zen koan, "What is the sound of no hands clapping?" Toby Young's follow-up comic memoir after "How to Lose Friends and Alienate People" tells us how to survive when there is egg on your face (thrown by the unclapping audience) and you've just taken a pratfall centerstage. Easy. You laugh at yourself. After all, life is just vaudeville, is it not?

While his first book focused on mis-adventures on the glitzy NY fringes, his second takes us mainly (but not exclusively) to Los Angeles and London. In some ways, the theme is the nature of desire and how it can go horribly wrong when you over-shoot your mark.

The good news here is his guide, Hollywood Insider Rob Long--wise and witty and a true friend. A found myself looking forward to these sections particularly. The other good news is that freed from a false success by failure, Toby Young backs into a happy life with a balance of marriage, fatherhood, and the just-right metier of the lowbrow British sex farce which he can write with a collaborator. Oh, joy!

--Janet Grace Riehl, author Sightlines: A Poet's Diary