BACK TO

December 2 2001

Martin Amis told him to go fuck himself. Julie Burchill said she'd rot in hell before she gave "that little bastard" a quote for his book. Are you only supposed to give your friends quotes for their books, then? Damn. Anyway, poor old Toby Young, co-founder (with Burchill) of The Modern Review, has never been exactly well liked and therefore has only bad quotes on his book. That's a shame, because it is actually very good.

Invited to go and work as a contributing editor at Vanity Fair in New York, Young ditches his girlfriend, flies off to the city that never sleeps and hopes that he'll get to bed supermodels, befriend celebrities, take loads of coke and drink a lot. What actually happens is that he gets fired and, gradually, everybody starts to hate him. On the surface this seems to be straightforward loser-lit. But this book is saved by its disarming honesty and Toby Young is - wait for it - an incredibly likeable narrator. More than just memoir, this book is also an examination of the way in which work dominates in contemporary America and the utter shallowness of a media world obsessed with celebrity. It is funny, authentic and compelling.