Letters to the Editor
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And she demonstrates how to do it
Count on Havrilesky to make an article about bad, boring writing wickedly fun to read.
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Toby Young
Heather Havrilesky's review is mysteriously hostile but fails to mention that Toby Young's first outing was side splittingly funny, I mean outbursts of embarrassing laughter when reading on the subway.Does this second outing fall disastrously short of that achievement?
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Critical Responses
I, for one, will be keeping a very interested eye on what others have to say about this book. For every positive review I come across, I will wonder deeply about the type of personality that would consider Toby Young to be read-worthy. I read exactly one chapter of Young's first book and knew I needn't go any further. I just figured my hopelessly middlebrow sensibility didn't get it. But after reading Havrilesky's evisceration, I'm thinking, maybe I wasn't wrong...
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Heather Is Right
The book is dull. Not really a "story" so much as a collection of cliched situations that were only mildly amusing the first 1,000 times we read about them.
But a familair situation can be forgiven if the author has a fresh and original take. Toby Young's writing is not fresh nor original.
Having said that there will undoubtedly be readers who, for whatever reason, truly are virgins to the same old charcters and situations found in this book that the rest of us are so familair with and will (in all honesty) think this book is ground breaking and funny.
Let's not begrudge those people their happiness.
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The sound of two middle fingers extending
HH nails what drove me nuts about Toby Young's previous book: he keeps telling these embarrassing, humiliating stories about himself without giving any reason why the reader should think he's anything but a jerk. But at least he also had some useful insights into the lure of celebrity and the industry that publicises it. This time around it seems he has nothing to give the reader but more examples of him being an ass and not learning from his mistakes. In fact, if he had learned from any of his mistakes he recounted in the first book, then there would no reason to write a second book at all. Maybe it's time for a moratorium on any second memoirs from the same person. Anyway, thanks to HH and Salon for the heads-up...
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sharp critique = good revue
Havrilesky's sharp critique gives detailed examples worth noting for any writer and her review demonstrates one should be, pointing out what's been done, what others have done, and what could've been done.
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Pot meet Kettle
"Got nothing to write about? No matter! You could fill a whole book with your rambling personal accounts, limited insights, and self-indulgent asides!"
Heather, Heather, Heather. Are you talking about your columns or someone else's book? Why does this book make you so hostile and angry? Could it be that you see yourself in the reflection of this author?
You describe your columns perfectly. Get a clue.
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With his second memoir, Toby Young proves he's still a jerk -- and a rambling, irritating, unfunny writer, too.
Heather H. typed this? Has she no sense of irony?
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If you can't spot the rambling, irritating, unfunny writer in the room, Heather...
Heather Havrilesky--she of the grating "chicken" endearments--expounds on someone else being a rambling, irritating, unfunny writer with nothing to say?
Now I've seen it all.
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writing lies beneath
Toby does not capture our imagination. He traps us into a dour sophistry borne out of greed for fame, and underlying erotic need. Clearly, the person we want to be cannot be destroyed by the person we must be: that is the obvious Freudian script for screwups. Mr. Young is unable to follow this line.
What readers and audiences prefer is a cultural reference to heroic deed and lover's angst. It is why The Bible is so popular in Arkansas, and the Quran is so pervasive in Afghanistan. The eternal parable of failure isn't written successfully; ergo, it sinks into low, esteem-o-spheric imagery that frightens every attempted scribbler.
What Young brings us is not a self-portrait of anything familiar, but the afterbirth of the irregular and non-nuanced denunciation of any character at all. This existential shithole is difficult to write out of, and impossible to describe adequately for readers to inhale without choking. Perhaps this is what Camus' eternal dilemma represents: Toby Youngville does not... exist.
The double negative cannot outfox the triple whammy - no matter how poorly written a scenario of badness - when hope and discovery are dashed on the rocks of martinis, we must opt out.
Screenwriters understand that being "blocked" is part of The Process. He is no scriptscribe, nor even a fixer, or even a maker of wrongdoings.
That he is famous just gets our goat because we yearn for it so... so he has beaten us up with this slop. And the third strike is getting closer - because we know he has a book deal under way, don't we? The chickens are clucking louder than ever, Ms. Havrilesky: another egg is about to drop. It's not about him and his stupid, dumb life - it's all about laying our own eggs.
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Maybe He's Really A Performance Artist
Sometimes I wonder if Toby Young's whole "career" isn't just a stunt by a very clever performance artist trying to test the limit of the public's patience with assholes. Too bad Paris Hilton and Mel Gibson already beat him to it.
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To the people bashing HH
The object of HH's hatred isn't the pointlessness of Toby's book, it's the sour-natured attitude combined with the pointlessness. I'm guessing that HH is very aware that she writes (very well) about pointless things like TV. The difference is that she does it good-naturedly and without the self-centeredness that Toby exhibits. You ungrateful chickens could learn a thing or two...
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adam j
the point is that she SUCKS at it, not that she writes about pointless things, and that she's a pot calling the kettle black
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"Ungrateful"?
Adam J., what on earth is there about Heather Havrilesky's writing to be grateful for?