The new Orientalist finds adventure in the "wicked sorcery in Asia," discovers "sexual magic in the fleshpots where girls and boys stand behind glass partitions with numbers pinned to their G-strings," finds a place where he can feel "confident, trendy, good-looking." Off to Asia, writes the writer, "I tried to become that person I always wanted to be: extemporaneous, dangerously free, perpetually living in the perpetual now."
Along the way he makes a lot of discoveries. "There are between 2,000-3,000 hired killers in Bangkok." In Tokyo "corruption is so institutionalized that it doesn't even seem corrupt." And he meets other Orientalists.
One of them is Dina, who "hops from destination to destination like some wayward location scout for the feature film that is her life, and she never seems to lose patience with those around her, to let down for a second her facade of tranquillity and peace. I envy her. I want to be just like her." Indeed, the teller of this tale is a true wannabe -- many are those with whom he would willingly trade places in his search for an Asian ultimate. And eventually he learns the lesson that travel teaches. "The essence of the circuit is movement, the traveling is an end in itself. There is in this relentless swirl of cool places, great-looking boys and girls and toxic substances, somehow the idea that if you just keep swirling, don't stop the dance, then you will be young and pretty and clever forever."
But he is not a very good swirler. "I always break some sort of etiquette, ask too many questions, want to know last names, hometowns, colleges, professions. Heads shake. I just don't get it." He intends something like James Bond -- cool, macho, professional, hip -- but always ends up more like Austin Powers.
This proves both a limitation (no matter how much dope or sex, he never really gets it on) and, for the reader, an asset, since we have as protagonist a very attractive loser who has his face pressed firmly against a candy-store he cannot find the door to. Like Holden Caulfield, he must finally endure maturity, but in the process he learns to be an observer.
This means that he can no longer entertain ambitions toward being a participant, one of the golden horde that originally so attracted him to mythic Asia. Here is his description of being deep-throated for the first time. "It's a strange feeling, pleasurable certainly, but also a little awkward because she's concentrating so hard that I feel almost like I'm watching a scientific experiment." An observer to the end.
And after a few more cautious experiences like this, he comes to some conclusions. "What was the point of leaving my old life and those pressures of conforming if out here I just discovered a new dress code? Warrior tattoos. Teva sandals, Versace camouflage shirts. If I want to ride the circuit, will I have to succumb to a new aesthetic every bit as constructing as a tweed suit?"
The answer is yes, and the author is now editor of Time Asia. Though he may still call Jakarta "the Jake," and though he may describe the boulder-strewn Koh Phangang coastline as looking like "the sedative crumbs at the bottom of an old Valium prescription," still he's not a member -- he's dropped out of the fast lane.
By this I do not mean Greenfeld. I mean the first-person persona he has created for his travelogue. Whether one intends it or not, all first-person writing constructs the person who is doing the writing. There may be parallels and similarities, but there are no identicals. This is because a self is possible only when compared against the environment that creates it. Thus we have "Austin" Taro Greenfeld and his wannabe ambitions and his later considerations, all of them sage. Orientalist aspirations are no longer entertained.
We have, indeed -- however wild the details -- a classic bildungsroman, a coming-of-age novel, something like a "Wilhelm Meister" for our times. The deviations have indeed been standard.
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