Opinion

How to Lose Friends & Alienate People

Written by: Toby Young
Published by Abacus

In 1995, Toby Young, co-founder of The Modern Review, journalist and critic, having closed The Modern Review without telling his co-founder, left the UK to take up an invitation to 'come hang out for a month' at Vanity Fair. The invitation came from VF Editor Graydon Carter, and was the result of some assiduous jockeying on Young's part. How to Lose Friends & Alienate People is the story of his attempts to break into the New York Society which is both chronicled and directed by Vanity Fair and the other publications of the Condé Nast family. As may be deduced from the title, it was not a successful effort.

I tend to go into books that open with three pages of recommendations and reviews with a certain degree of scepticism, not to say outright suspicion, but broadly, that was misplaced here. The various incidents which comprise this memoir are told with considerable style, and an easy, conversational manner that makes the reading of it a great pleasure. It's an interesting approach; to tell the story of one's own failure to achieve a greatly-desired goal, and make a comedy of it. Through the course of the book, Young recounts encounters with everyone from fellow journalists, to 'clipboard Nazis (not a phrase I'm particularly impressed by, used to describe the people who guard 'the list' on the door of clubs and events), to celebrities, to a number of romantic interests. In almost none of these does he emerge with much dignity, nor even a great deal of credit.

There's a great deal to be said for Toby Young as a narrator, at least of his own story. The rather shallow motivations for a great deal of his quest for success and acceptance are openly acknowledged, and his almost limitless capacity for doing exactly the wrong thing in any given situation is never avoided. Of course, the sensible view is to assume that at least some of these anecdotes (or possibly all of them) are exaggerated for effect, but even assuming a grain of truth, the whole is a disarmingly frank depiction of abject failure and indeed ridicule. Pretty well no one depicted in this book emerges with much in the way of honour.

One of the difficulties with this approach is that it's difficult to be sympathetic towards the author. Even giving points for honesty and for humiliating himself to the point of public self-flagellation, you're still left with the basic impression of someone willing to go to enormous lengths in pursuit of an essentially trivial aim. The world of celebrity parties and fashion shows, especially when covered by as sycophantic and compliant a press as the PR-controlled industry Vanity Fair represents, seems hardly the most appropriate target of a serious journalist. Young himself addresses this point, but the essence of his suggested motivation seems to hinge on it being precisely because it's so shallow, and because his parents would disapprove, which smacks of post-rationalisation, and even a hint of post-Kevin Williamson 'irony', and never seems adequate to me.

Then too, there are matters of his language which sit uncomfortably. His regular reference to men looking for women as 'swordsmen' seems both archaic and also offensive, reducing them to nothing more than representatives of their 'weapons'. Additionally, he has an irritating habit of reducing all New Yorkers to the level of the people working and hanging-on in the world he was trying to be accepted into. His frequent assertions of what New Yorkers think, or do, or believe, are annoyingly sweeping. Like him, I've lived and worked in New York, and I recognise none of the characteristics he claims define the city's people.

Young's eventual redemption, the point at which he realises that he's fallen out of love with New York and has a chance of happiness back in the UK, offers a positive note to the end of the story, and rounds out the whole very satisfyingly.

It's interesting that I read this book at the same time as I was reading Dave Eggers' A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, which, in its prologue, has some pointed things to say about the rise of the memoir in recent publishing. This book definitely falls into that category, but distinguishes itself with an original premise, and an impressive execution.