The Sound of No Hands Clapping: A Memoir | Toby Young | Getting In and Out of the Hollywood Business

The Sound of No Hands Clapping: A Memoir | Toby Young | The Sound of no hands clapping

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The Sound of No Ha...

	The Sound of No Hands Clapping: A Memoir Toby Young Da Capo Press, 2006 - 304 pages average customer review:based on 6 reviews view larger image
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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.

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Getting In and Out of the Hollywood Business

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.

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The Sound of no hands clapping

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.

Cracked Me Up!

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!

Status Anxiety - but how genuine?

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.

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reviews: page 1, 2

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