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Bites from the Big Apple -January 5, 2002, Saturday, by Terry Oberg

In 1993, holidaying British journalist Toby Young slipped into Hollywood's most exclusive post-Oscars party. He was quickly ejected, but the brief time he spent rubbing shoulders with the likes of Tom Cruise, Leonardo DiCaprio and Sharon Stone changed the course of his life.

By 1995 he had moved to New York to become a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, looking forward to a life of outrageous expense accounts, decadent luxury and (especially) celebrity-strewn parties.

As the title of his memoir is How to Lose Friends & Alienate People, you've doubtless guessed that things didn't go to plan. Given the title and the premise, one would expect a pithy tome exposing the ugly underbelly of the New York glitterati, replete with scandalous celebrity anecdotes and stories of hilarious cultural misunderstandings and humiliating social faux pas.

That's exactly what Young delivers in a book that reads like a cross between Bonfire of the Vanities and an episode of Seinfeld (if only because Young's social ineptitude recalls the inimitable George Costanza).

Before his epiphany, Young had been the editor of The Modern Review, a London-based publication he started "to provide a forum for journalists and academics to write long, scholarly articles about the likes of Bruce Willis and Stephen King -- the magazine's motto was 'Low Culture for Highbrows' ".

After his brief taste of celebrity schmoozing, and a bitter row with his co-publisher, he decided to close the magazine and pursue his newfound dream, described thus:

"My idea of heaven was being able to roll around naked in a huge pile of money with Anna Nicole Smith without feeling the slightest pang of conscience."

Two weeks later, Vanity Fair's editor Graydon Carter offered Young a one-month trial, and the Brit set out to take a bite of the Big Apple.

The words of Hollywood heavyweight Herman J. Mankiewicz's famous telegram to an aspiring screenwriter echoed in his head: "Millions are to be grabbed out here and your only competition are idiots. Don't let this get around."

Expecting a work environment peopled by plucky, no-nonsense New Yorkjournalists straight out of a Frank Capra movie, Young was in for a shock. His descriptions of his snobbish co-workers in Vanity Fair's Conde Nast offices (dubbed "Condescending and Nasty") are alternately funny and frightening.

The extravagances of the editorial staff are summed up by a former editor's maxim: "Never fear being vulgar -- just boring, middle class or dull."

Take, for instance, Young's account of the staff's practice of couriering their luggage ahead when taking a trip, work-related or not ("So much simpler than taking it there yourself, dahling!").

Or a writer who persuaded the company to provide him with a Parisian flat, although on the rare occasions that he visited France he stayed at the Ritz. Or the girl who, upon snaring a well-known celebrity husband, rang a gossip columnist and then, as an afterthought, her parents.

It's not just the pseudo-celebrities of the journalistic world that get a workover. The story of his interview with an obviously gay Hollywood star, terminated abruptly when Young innocently inquired as to his sexual orientation, is a corker.

While these tales are entertaining (although occasionally unsettling), Young's string of social faux pas, politically incorrect stunts and disastrous romantic misadventures are the book's comic highlights. Young certainly isn't afraid of describing his frequent humiliations in minute detail -- indeed, at times he seems overly enthusiastic in doing so.

One of the most memorable of these involves Young's hiring a market research consultant to solve the riddle of his lack of success with the Big Apple's female population. Sitting behind a two-way mirror while the consultant asked eight of his female acquaintances for their frank opinions of their "friend", Young's masculine pride took a battering from which it surely is still recoiling.

The book's humour hinges on Young's irreverence and political incorrectness in the face of absurdity, but at times his writing takes an ironic turn into the snobbishness that he professes to despise.

He tells of a trip to London when two of his Vanity Fair superiors, their newborn baby and her nanny flew business class "while I was stuck in economy".

"It was a brutal reminder of my place in the food chain," he continues. "Aimee cared more about her nanny's feeling than mine." Poor fellow.

Some of Young's humiliations are so extreme that the reader can't help but sympathise. At other times, his egotism, juvenility and stupidity conspire to make one feel that the prat wasn't embarrassed nearly enough. His proud boastings regarding his massive consumption of alcohol and cocaine do little to endear him, nor does his cavalier treatment of the opposite sex.

Of course, the book's purpose is not to ingratiate, but rather to entertain and, sometimes, to philosophise. Young makes occasional digressions into scholarly dissertation, pondering the difference between the aristocratic society of his homeland and the supposed meritocracy of New York. He also examines the contrast between the attitudes of the muck-raking British media (as one newspaper's motto proclaims, "Everyone hates us and we don't care") and the fawning "celebrity whores" of the US press.

The nation's obsession with political correctness and litigation are addressed with a similar degree of insight.

The Australian edition of the book includes a foreword that reads like an embarrassed apology for his vehemence in the wake of the events ofSeptember 11. His hope that the disaster could see Manhattan's upper class "sober up a bit" lends an unexpected resonance to some of his tales.

Toby Young's printed persona may alternate from "likeable rogue" to "snooty cad", but How to Lose Friends undoubtedly is a guilty pleasure. Avoid it if tales of wild extravagance, unrestrained decadence and overwhelming pretension are more likely to infuriate than fascinate. Otherwise, put your Vanity Fair to one side and enjoy.

How to Lose Friends & Alienate People, by Toby Young

(Little, Brown, $28).