 |
|
paperback HK$89.00
Chameleon Press
Paddyfield.com
More reviews by Wayne E. Yang
Readers may purchase reviewed books from Paddyfield.com, Asia's online bookseller.North American readers may prefer to buy US editions from Powells.com.
|
|
|
Standard Deviations by Karl Taro Greenfeld
When we first meet KARL TARO GREENFELD, he is stuck teaching English in a small Japanese town. But the young Greenfeld wants more: he is the typical young man who wants "to get loaded, go to nightclubs and fuck models." Greenfeld deftly, and bawdily, paints the Asian party scene for us, and we laugh as he whipsaws from party to party, drug to drug and woman to woman in the nightclubs of Tokyo and beaches of Southeast Asia.
STANDARD DEVIATIONS is often rip-roaringly funny. Greenfeld is hilarious, for instance, when he takes himself apart, as he complains about the meaninglessness of his small town teaching gig.
- What my life suffers from is smallness. It is the tiniest life I could imagine. I live in this small apartment. I ride this HO-scale commuter train. I teach in this pathetic high school. I have this paltry circle of friends. Nothing new or big or wild ever happens.
He's even funnier when he rips others and is at his most wicked when early in the book he takes apart fellow English teacher Nathan Applesworth, "one of those Americans who come to Japan and get super into everything Japanese. Sake, sumo, flower arranging, tea ceremony, Kabuki, No, karate, Bunraku, regional wasabis and exotic sweet bean pastes."
Greenfeld quickly puts the smallness of his life aside, though, as he steals a woman from right beside the lotus-seated Applesworth at a gathering of teachers. He goes to Tokyo and dives into the world of journalism: the beginning of a life lived 'large'. Later, he hooks up with a group of kids who live and play on the 'circuit', a set who jet set to different, dare we say 'exotic', Asian locations: "without a care in the world, who know the good spots and the right clothes." In this world, "the DJs are the celebrities" and life is only as good as the last club.
For all the `coolness' and humor of STANDARD DEVIATIONS, though, you're left with a sense of melancholy even before you finish each chapter. Greenfeld scores his share of kicks, but on several occasions, he tells us just how much of an outsider he feels even in the middle of these highs. "Don't you ever get tired of all this?" He also begins the inevitable wondering of whether he is losing a sense of himself, "playing a role, pretending to be carefree and footloose, when really I am neither of those things."
The best essay in the book by far is the title essay, which shows just what kind of promise Greenfeld has a writer. It is told in the third person, in contrast to the more personal first person of the early book, and something suggests that where Greenfeld's potential really lies is in a genre such as fiction, where he can explore his material away from the confines of "non-fiction".
It is the story of Laney, a Westerner, who comes to Indonesia, where he lives the life of high finance for an American firm, pitching stocks to fund managers back in the West. Laney refuses to believe that his life in Indonesia's swank clubs and restaurants can come to an end, despite warnings from his friend and colleague Tommy, an upperclass Indonesian, that all the potentially detrimental 'six-sigma' events that the market bulls say cannot happen -- can happen. The tale of Laney's love affair with an ethnic Chinese, Indonesian girl named Quan Quan in the midst of the political and economic turmoil that ultimately envelopes them is the highlight of Greenfeld's book.
In some respects, STANDARD DEVIATIONS has parallels to Jay McInerney's more stylized late 1980s novel Bright Lights, Big City, which follows the nightlife antics of a New York protagonist. In both books, you have hot economies fueling frivolous lifestyles. The obvious differences, of course, lie in the fact that STANDARD DEVIATIONS is presumably nonfiction, and it is set in the hot spots of Asia, rather than New York. You draw the parallel, however, because you wonder what Bright Lights, Big City would have been like if it had been written by Greenfeld. How should his promise as a writer be tested?
Greenfeld's book peters out as it ultimately becomes a mea culpa, not quite rising above the "sins" of its author (so to speak), especially as Greenfeld makes a dash at the end to bring us up to date on contemporary events. There is the requisite drying out period for the former party animal and druggie; there is the married man looking back on his days of wild oats. The final two essays come across more as journalism and less like the strong essays that populate the rest of the book.
Towards the close, Greenfeld tries to put a positive spin on his experimentation with alcohol and drugs, and we lose the `devil may care attitude' we came to love in the beginning. Greenfeld admits that his use reached abusive levels, but it is clear that the implication is that it is a war that he has not won. The book finishes as something unresolved: without either a victory or defeat -- without any clear statement, except that drying out can be a downer when you've been partying your ass off. That's a shame, because Greenfeld has so many strong qualities as a writer: a strong sense of pacing; the ability to size up and describe characters so efficiently, often acidly; and a wicked, wicked sense of humor.
What reinforces the early promise of the book is the feeling that there is a novel in the offing here, that Greenfeld is gathering material for a fictionalized view of this world. In STANDARD DEVIATIONS, we're told often about Greenfeld's desire to write books. Does Greenfeld have the potential to be an Asian J.D. Salinger or Jay McInerney? There is a lot here to suggest that we should hope so.
- Editor's note: The publisher of 'Standard Deviations', Chameleon Press, is part of the group that also runs the Asian Review of Books.
Wayne E. Yang
13/07/2003
|
Wayne E. Yang is based in New York, where he lives with his wife and two children. His web site is www.wayneyang.com. |
| |
|
