In the current issue of GQ, the writer Michael Wolff has rather an amusing piece about his predilection for feuding with his friends. ‘My longest feud was 15 years,’ he writes. ‘At that point, I met my feuding companion on Madison Avenue and we immediately took up where we left off. Feuds are, in a sense, a courtship. Even a seduction: has my absence, my resistance, my resolve, impressed you — or worn you down?’
The subject of the piece is his latest feud, which happens to be with me. I first met Michael in New York when I was working at Vanity Fair. I’d read his book about his stint as an unsuccessful dotcom entrepreneur — Burn Rate — and wrote him a fan letter. He responded by inviting me to lunch at Michael’s, his favourite restaurant (which he no longer goes to because he’s feuding with the owner). It wasn’t love at first sight, but we had lunch again in Los Angeles and this time we bonded. What changed between our first and second meetings is that I’d been fired from Vanity Fair and he’d started working there. We now had a subject we could both talk about for hours: Graydon Carter, the magazine’s egomaniacal editor-in-chief. Our mutual fascination with Graydon became the basis of a firm friendship.
One of the things that made being friends with Michael such fun is that we had to conceal our friendship from his boss. Since the publication of How to Lose Friends & Alienate People, I’ve been persona non grata at Vanity Fair. Graydon goes bananas if you so much as mention my name in his presence — he refers to my book as an ‘unauthorised biography’ — and being seen in public with me is a surefire way to get sacked.
When Michael gave a dinner for me in New York he arranged for me to be brought by Joanna Coles, the British editor of Marie Claire. That way, if Graydon found out I’d been at his house Michael would be able to say I’d turned up, uninvited, with Joanna. (Michael is now feuding with Joanna.)
Being secret friends suited Michael. He’s one of nature’s plotters and schemers. In another life, he would have been a powerbroker in the College of Cardinals, possibly even a Pope. Then again, he could just as easily be a consigliere to a mafia kingpin.
Behind his weedy appearance — he looks like a bald Woody Allen — lurks a James Bond villain. He’s constantly hatching plans for world domination. His ambition is to become a 21st-century robber baron. Rupert Murdoch, of whom he wrote a seditious biography, is a kind of idealised father figure, simultaneously loathed and revered. Like me, Michael is susceptible to Oedipal rage.
One of Michael’s appealing qualities is that he’s at the mercy of his feelings. Not surprising, then, that when he fell in love with a beautiful young woman — and, to his amazement, she reciprocated — he decided to leave his wife. Not a decision taken lightly because Michael is devoted to his children. I remember him telling me once that he would break any commitment, no matter how important, to have dinner with one of his children. Protecting them, advising them, looking out for their interests — and doing it well — is part of who he is.
Which is why he’s plagued by guilt. At least, I think he is. That can be the only explanation for the way he behaved towards my wife at a dinner party given by Rachel Johnson last year. They were talking about Michael’s complex emotional life when he got it into his head that she was criticising his behaviour. She wasn’t — it was pure projection. He didn’t fly into a rage, just started saying unpleasant things to her in a calm and measured way. Even though I adore him — or did, anyway — I haven’t spoken to him since.
Michael ends his GQ piece by saying I should call him, though he adds that he won’t take the call. It’s hard to see how we could ever be friends again without him delivering a grovelling apology to Caroline and that’s about as likely to happen as George Monbiot admitting he’s wrong about global warming.
Perhaps I could broker a mutual apology… no, it won’t happen. There’s no way back. Which is a shame. I miss him.
Toby Young is associate editor of The Spectator.
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