How many friends could he have left to lose?

Curiosity? Or perhaps just momentum lead me to pick up Toby Young’s sequel, The Sound of No Hands Clapping. Found it in hardcover in a used bookstore with a strange printing error; over thirty pages printed twice. How does something like that even happen?

Anyhow, this memoir picks up from where the last one has left off. How to Lose Friends is a big success– the next step naturally is the film rights. This book chronicles Young’s new ambition, to conquer Hollywood. And this is very interesting; his whole meditations on being a frustrated screenwriter; the dogged first steps of someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing; the screenwriting books. All very familiar. At first I thought it was going to be light on material because it seemed much smaller than the first; but instead found it quite satisfying; well paced. Yeah it’s over quicker; but then its a topic he has much less to say about than magazines and the cult of the zeitgeist.

His ambition to be a screenwriter; I don’t know; I just find it very suspect. Like he walks away from the whole thing as if it didn’t mean anything to him in the first place; where instead I suspect it’s because he didn’t succeed there. But I think there’s more to this than he lets on. You don’t publish two books without a talent to get things done. And the books are well plotted; fast-moving and funny; even if they are saccharine in their descriptions of domestic life. So he’s got some talent. I just don’t believe his claims that he believed himself to be “truly interested” in movies– in making the “great genre classic”– how generic a goal is that? It appears that the only thing he’s truly interested in is Toby Young. Luckily he writes about that subject very well.

Third Eye Theatre

While researching an article recently about the Number 23

(which can be found at the post’s website)

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/artslife/story.html?id=106dafea-2a1f-4188-a10b-e51fabceb952&k=54248

A friend of mine lent me this book here:

I had never read Robert Anton Wilson before and was surprised to find out how many writers I know and like have been influenced by him. He seems to be an arch conspiracy fiend. So far the book is proving to be very challenging. Mind altering? Expansive? Or just a lot of hippie bullshit? Well. Maybe all of the above. It’s already got me thinking about the limits of perception. I’ll let you know when I start dropping peyote.

Of late…

Over the holidays I read a few books.

Funny thing reading this. I was vacationing in Rio de Janerio; thinking of Manhattan media life and how it relates back to my life in Toronto. Hard to get away some times innit? Desperate story; cripplingly funny dialogue; bit of a pat ending; but for a memoir, that’s kind of hard to avoid. Graydon Carter is a hilarious specter that haunts every page of this book… even when he’s not there you still expect him to pop up and call Toby a cunt. Made me look at the whole celebrity/media machine from a whole new perspective.  Hard to really agree with a lot of what Young said though; since his colleagues were just those who wanted to work at what they were being paid for–not take the piss out of it.

Anyhow…

I also read

A curious book to read while vacationing with one’s wife. Much to say here. Fitzgerald is a brilliant writer. Original observations; turns of phrase popping in every single sentence.  And yet somehow the whole book falls down about halfway through; just loses all dramatic urgency. The destruction of his brilliant golden boy psychologist became less enthralling when it was less… fun I expect… you knew he was going down and then had to watch his decline for over half the book. Much more engaging reading those crackling scenes where his relationships still held in the balance. Anyhow.

Half Blind Not Dead

Book blogs are done right? Nothing new here.

Still. I’m going to keep a record of things that I’m reading. Maybe this will help me remember them better; maybe it won’t. But hopefully at the end of the year I’ll be able to look back and say– hey– that’s not so bad. These books I liked. These books I didn’t.

Let’s see where it goes.