Reviews for Sound of No Hands Clapping: A Memoir

The average rating for Sound of No Hands Clapping: A Memoir based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-11-16 00:00:00 Glenn Steelman I loved Young's first book, How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, which was a witty but profound memoir of a young man maturing during his pursuit of success in the New York City magazine publishing world, and I was eager to read this book, a follow-up memoir about Young's adventures in Los Angeles as his first book is developed into a movie. I grew up in a suburb of Houston, where we identify culturally much more with Los Angeles than New York. I subscribed to no NYC-based magazines, but I spent nearly every weekend at my local movie theater, so I hoped to read Young's incisive commentary applied to a world that captured my interest much more than New York City. Unfortunately, this book had a different focus, and it didn't meet my high expectations. The Los Angeles scenes are great. Young really opens up the world of a Hollywood screenwriter, with procedures and etiquette and considerations that I had never contemplated, and I loved the journey of this lovable lout as he tried to adapt the life of a truly reprehensible record producer into a biopic. Young shares enough gossipy details to pique the interest of fans who enjoyed those elements of his earlier memoir, although not enough to satisfy that interest once it is piqued. Unfortunately, Young doesn't move to Los Angeles until chapter 21. I don't know that the majority of the book is more of an internal journey as Young confronts his own failings when presented with an upcoming wedding, then news of his wife's pregnancy with their first child.. but these are the parts that seem to drag the most in my memory. The insights are often touching, yes, but I wasn't prepared for "The first book, but in LA!" to be more of, "The same guy, mostly in London and thinking about LA! and marriage and children!" Fans of Young's first book may as well continue on to this one. I do still like him despite myself, which indicates success on his part. Someone with a big interest in the "laws and sausages" behind-the-scenes ugliness of movie-making will also like many parts of the book, as will someone looking to read an honest story from a man maturing quickly into new domestic responsibilities. I was looking for more Hollywood fun, though, and I was ultimately disappointed in the memoir.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-02-10 00:00:00 Lara Amoroso Toby Young's second, equally brilliantly titled memoir, starts off after How to Lose Friends and Alienate People has got into print. It happens to catch the eye of a Hollywood producer who offers him a crack at adapting a biography about a self-destructive '70s-era record producer into a screenplay for a movie he wants to make, while a a different set of producers comes around to talk about making his first book into a movie. Once again, he's in America going after the Big Time, albeit on the West coast rather than the East. It would be a mistake to approach this book as Toby's Big Hollywood Adventure, however. No Hands Clapping is really a chronicle of his life after the events of the previous book, with his screenwriting experiences just the connecting thread running through the narrative. Toby still has ambitions, but the fire's not as hot as when he hopped across the Atlantic to work for Graydon Carter. The tensions and conflicts that did so much to make the original book interesting for me - the contrast between his intelligence and education and his starstruck hunger for glamour, his frustrated lust for the good life, the clash between his rather shallow goals and his parents' accomplishments and values - are far less in evidence here, having largely run their course the last time around. Toby's settling down at the end of the last book is a significant part of that, and as might be guessed, his life as a "whipped" (but mostly content) boyfriend, husband and father coping with domestic and mid-life crises is rather less entertaining than his earlier laddishness. He's still quite good at "losing friends and alienating people," but he seems to be enjoying the role a bit too much. The result is that this all seems more like an anticlimax to the history that made him an "icon of defeat" rather than a fully satisfactory follow-up. Still, there were some of the funny bits and worthwhile insights that helped make the first book memorable.