Status Anxiety | 16 February 2008

Where is the next generation of Toby Youngs? It’s my turn to dismiss their drivel

In 1988, Weidenfeld and Nicolson published a book called The Oxford Myth. Edited by Rachel Johnson and containing essays by a variety of precocious undergraduates, it was the worst reviewed book of the year. ‘A singularly worthless volume,’ wrote Niall Ferguson in the Times. ‘Routine and uninspired,’ said William Boyd in the Sunday Telegraph. As the author of the first essay — on the subject of Class — I was singled out for criticism by almost everyone. Andrew Davies, the celebrated adaptor of literary classics for television, said it made him want to puke.

At the time, we comforted ourselves with the thought that this was just part of the hazing process. Of course we were going to get up the noses of more established writers and critics — as Emile Durkheim pointed out, generational conflict is one of the defining characteristics of the modern age. All aspiring journalists had to go through this ritual before being admitted into the fraternity. In due course, if we were lucky, we would succeed to positions of power and then it would be our turn to pour scorn on those seeking to supplant us.  

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Twenty years later, and that day still has not arrived. Every spring I eagerly scan the publishers’ catalogues, searching for the contemporary equivalent of The Oxford Myth, but it is nowhere to be seen. Even the broadsheets, always on the lookout for new voices, have failed to turn up any anti-establishment firebrands. Where is the next generation of young whippersnappers eager to take their place in the journalistic pantheon? Where are the new Toby Youngs whose efforts to say something witty and interesting I can dismiss as ‘sick-making drivel’? I have had to take it on the chin for what seems like an eternity and it is now my turn to start landing some punches.