Toby Young
Toby Young
Av: Magnus Gustafsson
Toby Young är en sådan där kille som man inte vet om man ska skratta eller gråta åt när man hör om hans misslyckanden. I boken “How to lose friends and alienate people” berättar han om hur han åker till New York i mitten på 90-talet för att skriva för Vanity Fair. Han misslyckas kapitalt. Han gör allt fel och dessutom blir han alkoholist. Låter det som en komedi eller en tragedi? Kanske både och.
Riotbrain fick en pratstund med Toby Young
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When did you decide that it was writing and journalism that you wanted to do?
- Karl Miller, who was then the editor of the London Review of Books, asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up at the launch party for my mother’s second novel in 1983. I was 19 at the time. I said, “I want to be a journalist because they get paid the most amount of money for the least amount of work.” Before that, I hadn’t given the matter much thought, but I decided then and there that that is what I wanted to do.
One thing that is striking when you read “How to lose friends…” is that you are almost obsessed by celebrity and celebrities. Why this fascination?
- Everyone asks me this, as if it was a mysterious, little-known condition that very few people suffer from. In fact, everyone I know is obsessed by celebrities. If it’s a disease, it’s more ubiquitous than the common cold. The question isn’t why I’m interested in celebrities, but why so many people in the West are, at least at this moment in time. It has to do with democracy and the mass media and the decline of Christianity–and a hundred other things.
This obsession with celebrities is something that feeds a big part of the media today. What does that in your view say about our society?
- That it’s days are numbered.
In “How to loose friends…” you reveal a lot about the life at Vanity Fair and other magazines in the mid 90ies. What was the reaction to the book and its contents when it came out and do you think this destroyed your chances to ever get a new job in New York?
- When I first started telling people in New York that I intended to write a tell-all book about Vanity Fair, they all said that I was crazy and that I’d never work again. In fact, it’s done my career nothing but good. To give just one example, in 2002 I was contacted by one of the biggest producers in Hollywood who’d read my book and loved it–principally because he loathed Graydon Carter, the editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair. He ended up hiring me to write a picture for him. In general, people are much more frightened of supposedly powerful people than they need to be.
What kind of person is successful in this world you describe in your books?
- “And indeed the most coldly calculating people do not have half the success in life that comes to those rightly blended personalities who are capable of feeling a really deep attachment to such persons and conditions as will advance their own interests.” Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities
Compared to Swedish media the British press seems to be very aggressive when reporting about politicians and celebrities. Why do you think that is?
- The British tend to be very suspicious of anyone in authority–it’s part of our Bulldog spirit. The way the press reports on the rich and powerful is also fuelled by class envy, most journalists being neither rich nor powerful. It’s one of the many hidden benefits of our despised class system.
You started The Modern Review with Julie Burchill. Today anyone can easily publish what he or she writes and get people to read it. What effect do you think the Internet will have on journalism?
- In the longterm, I can’t see newspapers surviving–at least, not in their current form. The Internet has turned us into ruthless predators when it comes to hunting for information. We can no longer be bothered to sift through the pages of a newspaper in search of some interesting tidbit. In general, I think the Internet has reduced people’s tolerance for intermediaries when it comes to getting information; it has made editors redundant.
In both your books you describe how you fail doing things. But I get the feeling that you bring the failures on yourself by doing things in a very provocative way, doing stuff that you must have understand yourself that it would backfire. Why is that?
- It’s almost entirely unconscious. I don’t set out to fail, though in retrospect it seems inevitable, given the way I’ve gone about it. Why does my unconscious constantly sabotage my plans? Having never undergone therapy, it’s all a bit of a mystery. It must have something to do with a lack of self-confidence–as well as a lack of confidence in the value of the goals I’m pursuing. Deep down, I don’t think I like successful people. They make me feel shitty and I don’t want to make other people feel shity by succeeding myself. But I continue to labour under the illusion that I can conquer this weakness.
Have life as a married man and father changed anything in the way you do things these days?
- I drive much more slowly than I used to. Because I have children myself, I worry about running over other people’s children. That applies across the board. I used to think of myself as a bit of a rebel, but now I have a vested interest in preserving civil society. I’ve become a fully-paid up member of the bourgeoisie.
What is left to do for Toby Young?
- A great number of things. I feel like I need at least another 200 years to do everything I’d like to do. The thought that I’ve only got about 20 productive years left is truly terrifying. Why am I even bothering to answer these questions? I must get back to work–immediately.
Magnus Gustafsson