Standard deviations
Subtitle: growing up and coming down in the new Asia
By: Karl Taro Greenfeld.
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: Villard Books
Published: 2002
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 250
Subjects: Greenfeld, Karl Taro, 1964- -- Travel -- Asia.; Asia -- Description and travel.
Description: "In the late 1980s, not long out of college, Karl Taro Greenfeld found himself stranded in New York, a failed writer before his career had even begun. His Jewish-American father angrily cut off support; his Japanese mother suggested he go to Japan to teach English. He did, accepting a job with no more promise than he'd had before. But he stayed in Asia for the next several years, working his way through a series of journalistic posts, watching a culture erupt before his eyes and facing his own demons.

Through a series of vividly imagistic stories that range from the rigidly journalistic to the deeply intimate, Standard Deviations recounts Greenfeld's experiences - both professional and personal - during Asia's wild ride at the end of the twentieth century.

Whether drinking Japanese cough syrup to get high with other Western expatriates, visiting a free-sex ashram in Bombay or watching a former high school pal self-destruct as an equity analyst in Jakarta, Greenfeld evokes the spirit of a continent in flux at an explosive "bubble" economy's end - and a man confronting his own identity and aspirations."--BOOK JACKET.