2002 ∙ Toby Young ∙ 368 pgs
This is the most apropos title for a book I’ve ever seen. It explains exactly what happens to our protagonist, Toby Young, as he tries to make his way through the world that is America and Condé Nast. I devoured every page wondering what wacky, self-destructive, purely idiotic thing Mr. Young was going to do next. He was the most clueless character I’d ever seen. The ineptitude, the crassness, the alcoholism, the puerile drivel that flowed from his mouth on a daily basis… How could anybody be so clueless about how things work? While Mr. Young had created a thoroughly entertaining and memorable character, I thought over and over again how it was funny, but ultimately unbelievable. Then I remembered that this was a true story. This happened to me every five pages or so. Every time he did something like hiring a stripper for a colleague’s birthday at Vanity Fair on bring your daughter to work day, or starting snorting lines of coke in the middle of a photo shoot for the magazine, I just shook my head in disbelief. Anybody that has ever worked in magazine publishing, or dealt with the hideous, trust fund fahsionistas that dominate the industry will absolutely get a kick out of this book. Anybody that has seriously fucked his or her career by doing something really fuckin’ stupid will love it as well. Toby Young says and does all the things we wish we could have. He does all the things we are afraid to do. He is the crash test dummy for all of us white collar assholes who thought going to college, coming in on time and performing to the best of our abilities might actually entitle us to some loyalty from our employers. Now we know we could have screwed off every day, drank until our uvulas fell out and the end result would have been exactly the same–without the rich book contract, of course.
