In 2001, a rather unremarkable journalist named Toby Young published a memoir titled “How to Lose Friends & Alienate People”, about his his failed five-year effort to make it in New York City, beginning as a contributing editor at Vanity Fair magazine, and heading quickly downhill from there.
According to the book cover, it was a bestseller at some point… and it was made into a movie in 2008.
Not bad for a journalist who apparently failed at everything he attempted in New York. Within the space of two years he was fired from Vanity Fair, got banned from the most fashionable bar in the city, and couldn’t get a date for love or money.
One wonders, though, if Mr. Young wanted to fail? I mean, because maybe he knew his story about being a consummate failure would ultimately attract book readers and movie producers?
There’s almost nothing humans enjoy more than watching somebody slip on a banana peel, or get a martini thrown in their face. And when Toby Young’s 368-page book details a seemingly endless string of awkward and humiliating social disasters… how can you not love it?
I found a used paperback copy on Amazon, for $1.04 plus shipping. Apparently, the book isn’t destined to become a piece of classic literature. But for a journalist like myself, it was mildly edifying. For one thing, I know not to apply for a job at Vanity Fair.
Mr. Young left New York City with his tail between his legs, so to speak, but later found himself in Hollywood, where he continued to screw things up.
From the Amazon blurb for his subsequent book:
‘The Sound of No Hands Clapping’ finds Toby pursuing a glamorous career in Hollywood while trying to balance his new life as a husband and parent. Failure-and-fatherhood have never been funnier.
I have not read this book, because the cheapest used copies online start at $4.99. Plus shipping. That’s out of my price range. But I have to assume that this is a sequel of sorts, wherein Mr. Young again fails at pretty much everything he tries. It would appear from the Amazon blurb, however, that in this next book, he has somehow managed to become a husband and father, indicating (at least superficially) that he managed to get married and had sex on at least one occasion. But if anyone wants to classify those two attainments — marriage, and fatherhood — as “failures”, I won’t argue.
I was surprised that second-hand copies of Toby Young’s second memoir, about his failures in California, are priced higher than his memoir about screwing up in New York City. But book readers are a fickle bunch, and there’s no telling when they might be willing to spend $4.99. (Plus shipping.)
One thing I appreciate about Mr. Young. He knows how to pick a catchy book title. How to Lose Friends & Alienate People references, of course, the perennial bestseller by Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People; while his second book title, The Sound of No Hands Clapping humorously references the famous Zen kōan, “What is the sound of one hand clapping?”
That confounding question has been attributed to Takeda Mokurai, at one time the master of the Kennin-ji temple in Kyoto. But it also gets referenced in the title of a 1973 documentary film, One Hand Clapping, about Paul McCartney and his band, Wings. I’m not going to try and guess where Toby Young might have come across the phrase, but he gave certainly it a clever twist.
“No hands clapping.”
Admittedly, I’m not a Zen Buddhist, nor particularly a fan of Wings, but it seems to me that “one hand clapping” would sound remarkably similar to “no hands clapping”. Except the latter phrase actually makes sense to an American like myself. Especially if you’re in Hollywood, seeking applause, and failing miserably to get any.
We have a regular experience of “no hands clapping” here at the Daily Post. Once in a blue moon, our editor gets an email complaining about my humor articles, but I don’t believe he has ever received an email complementing my writing.
Which makes me think, I really ought to write a memoir.