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Toby Young

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The Sound of No Hands Clapping: A Memoir MP3 CD – Unabridged, July 15, 2006

by Toby Young (Author), Simon Vance (Narrator)

4.0 25 ratings

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The highly anticipated sequel to the best-selling-and laugh-out-loud funny How to Lose Friends and Alienate People. When even his friends refer to him in print as "a balding, bug-eyed opportunist with the looks of a beach ball, the charisma of a glove-puppet, and an ego the size of a Hercules supply plane," the odds of Toby Young scoring-in any sense-appear to be slim. But then How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, his account of the five years he spent trying (and failing) to take Manhattan, improbably catapults Toby to bestsellerdom, and his book is translated into twelve languages, including American. Now Tinseltown beckons. After receiving a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity from a big Hollywood producer, Toby sets his sights anew on a high-flying career, this time on the West Coast. But it doesn't take long for Toby's fabled "brown thumb" and self-sabotaging instincts to reassert themselves. On the home front, though, things seem to be looking up: Toby manages to persuade his girlfriend to marry him and move to Los Angeles-but then she decides to abandon her promising legal career in order to become a fulltime homemaker . . . and mother. Toby's increasingly hapless attempts to pursue a glamorous showbiz career while buried in diapers will strike a chord with all modern fathers struggling to find the right work/life balance . . . and with their utterly exasperated wives. Failure-and fatherhood-have never been funnier.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Tantor Audio; MP3 - Unabridged CD edition (July 15, 2006)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1400152496
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1400152490
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 3.2 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.3 x 0.6 x 7.4 inches

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4.0 25 ratings

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Toby Young

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I tried to enter some facts about myself here, but every time I hit "Save Changes" I got an error message saying, "The text entered may not contain profanity." It didn't, but no matter how many suspect words I deleted, I got the same error message. I guess my life is such a godawful mess, that merely trying to describe it constitutes a "profanity". If anyone's interested, they can check out my Wikipedia entry.

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M. JEFFREY MCMAHON

Getting In and Out of the Hollywood Business

Reviewed in the United States on August 26, 2006

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We learn in this witty self-deprecating memoir that it is vulgar and uncool to say "the Industry" when referring to Hollywood films; we must say "the Business." This is one of many funny lessons Toby Young learns when, minding his own business in London, he gets a strange call from a mysterious unnamed Hollywood producer who, having read Toby Young's first book How To Lose Friends And Alienate People, wants Young to write a screenplay about an obscure entertainment figure. Enticed at the prospect of making millions in Hollywood, Young disgruntles his new wife with his chimera quest. The book alternates between Young's Hollywood fiascos and his marital tumult, including the birth of of his first child. The most priceless moments are his correspondences with his friend, the Hollywood writer Rob Young, who teaches him, among other things, how to take a Business Lunch and the "vast repertoire of hand gestures" needed for equals, higher ups, and super bigwigs. These funny moments are part of Young's growing-up process as he becomes disenchanted with the Hollywood Beast. This has the same self-deprecating humor as his first book. For another memoir of disenchantment, check out The Working Stiff's Manifesto by Iaian Levison.

5 people found this helpful

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Janet Riehl

Backing Into Happiness

Reviewed in the United States on June 26, 2006

The title riffs off the famous Zen koan, "What is the sound of no hands clapping?" Toby Young's follow-up comic memoir after "How to Lose Friends and Alienate People" tells us how to survive when there is egg on your face (thrown by the unclapping audience) and you've just taken a pratfall centerstage. Easy. You laugh at yourself. After all, life is just vaudeville, is it not?

While his first book focused on mis-adventures on the glitzy NY fringes, his second takes us mainly (but not exclusively) to Los Angeles and London. In some ways, the theme is the nature of desire and how it can go horribly wrong when you over-shoot your mark.

The good news here is his guide, Hollywood Insider Rob Long--wise and witty and a true friend. A found myself looking forward to these sections particularly. The other good news is that freed from a false success by failure, Toby Young backs into a happy life with a balance of marriage, fatherhood, and the just-right metier of the lowbrow British sex farce which he can write with a collaborator. Oh, joy!

--Janet Grace Riehl, author Sightlines: A Poet's Diary

4 people found this helpful

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Sirin

Status Anxiety - but how genuine?

Reviewed in the United States on July 13, 2008

Toby Young is still starstruck. Following on from his ill fated adventures at society gloss mag, Vanity Fair in Manhattan, chronicled in How to Lose Friends and Alienate People (the movie based on that coming out later this year), Toby returns to London with aspirations to make it as a screenwriter.

Unfortunately for Toby, he lacks either the talent or the dedication to achieve genuine success. On the cusp of fatherhood, he muses greatly on the 'pram in the hall' theory of literature, how his family commitments will deny him the time to write, even though he has no great literary ideas anyway - the sure fire symptoms of a wannabe writer who sure as hell ain't gonna make it. Toby sort of knows this, and compensates by being a brat in the media establishment with a hysterical penchant for getting people's backs up and saying the wrong thing.

In this volume, Toby is older and wiser, and his voice in self deprecating status anxiety hits a nice tone (some great riffs, such as when his wife drags him away by the ear from a mid air champagne rendezvous with Gordon Ramsay) . The only trouble is - now that he is so good at it, can he really continue to parlay this brand of loser lit and not make it seem affected?

He is truly mingling with the high life now, with movie on the way. As Boris Johnson (one of the many media luminaries portrayed in this book) said, when removing his 'no life' Spectator column, the jig on that is well and truly up.

3 people found this helpful

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Jerry Waxler

One of my favorite

Reviewed in the United States on July 9, 2011

I stopped by to check up on some details about one of my favorite memoirs and was stunned to see others were not raving. Huh? This is a wonderful book about coming of age, or more accurately "launching" which is the period after coming of age when human beings have to figure out how to adults. I think that the self-consciousness of the memoir works beautifully. As a witty, media savvy writer, he is doing a send-up of himself, a brilliant play on his own journey. Reading between the lines, there are beautiful elements of character arc, as he gradually grows beyond his delusion that he is the only person who matters, and takes steps toward becoming a responsible father and husband.

As an aspiring writer myself, I am fascinated by the extent that people will reach in order to achieve some level of success and fame. In essence, all writers are in the business of fame, and so is the new wave social-media junkies. While we are out looking for hits to our blog or our Facebook page, it is informative to see how someone in the big time pursues the same goals.

Cheers to the author. I hope his adult life is as interesting as the pursuit of becoming an adult was.

One person found this helpful

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Merrin Folender

My Hands Definitely Didn't Clap.

Reviewed in the United States on February 10, 2007

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Boring, not as good as the first one. Would make you think the first one was a bore too. Sorry Toby.

Reviewed in the United States on February 21, 2007

While not quite at the level of "How to Lose Friends and Alienate People," I found myself laughing out loud quite a few times while reading this one. However, I must say I was almost disappointed to see Toby becoming somewhat more of a nice guy towards the end!

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C. Hackett

The Sound of no hands clapping

Reviewed in the United States on January 9, 2007

After reading first book, "how to Lose friends ..." Disappointed with second book from Toby Young. thru out book references to "my First" book. and what was humorous in his first becomes annoying in the second.

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Granted

Better than expected!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 13, 2013

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Some of the previous reviews had suggested this book was hurriedly written and too much like the prequel. In fact I enjoyed it very much and would recommend it - perhaps not quite as funny as the first book, but still well written and entertaining.

2 people found this helpful

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