How to Lose Friends & Alienate People

How to Lose Friends & Alienate People

Toby Young

Language: English

Pages: 368

ISBN: 030681188X

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


In 1995 high-flying British journalist Toby Young left London for New York to become a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. Other Brits had taken Manhattan-Alistair Cooke then, Anna Wintour now-so why couldn't he? But things didn't quite go according to plan. Within the space of two years he was fired from Vanity Fair, banned from the most fashionable bar in the city, and couldn't get a date for love or money. Even the local AA group wanted nothing to do with him. How to Lose Friends and Alienate People is Toby Young's hilarious account of the five years he spent looking for love in all the wrong places and steadily working his way down the New York food chain, from glossy magazine editor to crash-test dummy for interactive sex toys. But it's more than "the longest self-deprecating joke since the complete works of Woody Allen" (Sunday Times); it's also a seditious attack on the culture of celebrity from inside the belly of the beast. And there's even a happy ending, as Toby Young marries-"for proper, noncynical reasons," as he puts it-the woman of his dreams. "Some people are lucky enough to stumble across the right path straight away; most of us only discover what the right one is by going down the wrong one first."BEFORE PUBLICATION: "I'll rot in hell before I give that little bastard a quote for his book."-Julie Burchill AFTER PUBLICATION: "A relentlessly brilliant book-a What Makes Sammy Run for the twenty-first century…the funniest, cleverest, most touching new book I've read for as long as I can remember."-Julie Burchill, The Spectator

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

sorry, sir, but Premium Economy is completely full.” “Why not upgrade me then?” “I’m afraid I’m not authorized to do that, sir.” She gave me a slightly frosty look: NSU. The best she could offer me turned out to be right at the back of the plane next to a Mormon gentleman named Bryce who insisted on telling me all about his trip to London. Apparently, it had included visits to Buckingham Palace, Madame Tussaud’s and the British Museum! The only pleasant part of the seven-and-a-half hour journey

began attacking turkey necks and crow’s feet. . . . What was funny about it was that she was discussing it with me as though I were some important, skilled person from the art department and that I would be making the changes. It was too good not to play along with and we were soon in a philosophical/aesthetic discussion about aging and beauty—very surreal. I remember that we pointedly didn’t discuss ‘truth in advertising’ or ‘journalistic ethics.’” how to Lose Friends and Alienate People 93

indicating the crowd behind George. “If you go to the back a de line, I’m sure you’ll be accommodated in doo course.” George shot a contemptuous glance over his shoulder. “G. W. doesn’t wait in line,” he announced grandly. He then stuck out his chin and folded his arms: he wasn’t going anywhere. “Okay,” sighed the bouncer. “How many you wid?” I was astonished. I’d assumed that if you talked to a clipboard Nazi in this way, not only would he not let you in, you’d go straight to the top of his shit

for.” “The Independent Woman (and Other Lies),” Esquire, February 1999. how to Lose Friends and Alienate People 115 The short answer is in order to impress other women. As anyone who’s read Edith Wharton will know, it’s long been a fact of life in Manhattan, particularly among the social elite of the Upper East Side, that women judge each other according to who they can ensnare. Status is valued more highly than any other commodity in New York and marrying well is still the fastest way to get

Mercury. From that standpoint, Graydon looks very much like a man who has struck a Faustian bargain, abandoned his scruples in return for worldly success. On balance, I don’t think it makes much sense to accuse Graydon of hypocrisy. As the co-editor of Spy he may have frequently exposed the double standards of New York’s high and mighty, but he never staked out the moral high ground. If a self-righteous note occasionally crept into Spy’s denunciation of some corrupt politician it was usually just

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