Lisa Brackmann is a bestselling author of four novels and she has also contributed to a noir short story collection about San Diego. In addition, she has worked as an executive at a major motion picture studio, an issues researcher in a presidential campaign, and she was the singer / songwriter / bassist in an LA rock band. Her latest novel, ‘Dragon Day‘, was published this summer. I had an opportunity to talk with Lisa soon after her debut novel, ‘Rock Paper Tiger’, was published. In this interview, Lisa talks about her writing process as well as issues faced by artists in the wake of suppression, especially in contemporary China.
Sustaining both physical and mental injuries in the Iraq war while serving as a vet, Ellie Cooper finds herself in the strange surroundings of Beijing. Scarred from the inhuman experiences during war, Ellie is uncertain what the future holds for her, when she meets a Uighur dissident at a friend’s place. This single incident proves a turning point when soon after Ellie is chased by American and Chinese Secret services and it becomes impossible to know who can be trusted. The story provides glimpses of contemporary art scene in Beijing as well as the restrictions imposed on the freedom of artists. People getting together for any reason whatsoever – it may be as simple as exchange of creative ideas between artists – causes frowns on the unseen, unknown face behind the curtain. When every move you make is being watched, phones tapped, e-mails monitored, an ingenious form of communication evolves. Ellie and her companions communicate through Avatars of an online game called The Sword of Ill Repute. Fighting with dragons becomes a secondary task to secret exchange of messages.
Lisa Brackmann’s debut novel ‘Rock Paper Tiger’ was amongst the top ten mystery/thrillers on Amazon and it was also nominated for the Strand Magazine Critics Award for Best Debut Novel. “Be prepared for a wild ride,” is how the New York Times praised ‘Rock Paper Tiger’.
It is immensely satisfying to read a good book. And the opportunity to talk to the author about it only adds to it. It was great pleasure talking to Lisa about ‘Rock Paper Tiger’.
For ROCK PAPER TIGER, I knew that I wanted to write something that takes place in modern China, a setting that I felt was underutilized by Western novelists. I wanted to explore the contemporary Chinese art scene, because I found it really interesting. I also was very much concerned about the American “War on Terror” and the invasion of Iraq. So how could I juggle these disparate elements and turn them into some kind of story? The linchpin was the main character, Ellie Cooper, an accidental Iraq War vet. Through her I realized that a lot of what I wanted to say was about how imperial powers and unchecked authority, be they American or Chinese, tend to act in similar ways.
So, I really didn’t know how I was going to end the book. I pretty much let Ellie and those concerns guide me through the story. And along the way I realized that the book was really about how to live a moral, meaningful life in the face of huge impersonal forces that don’t necessarily value an “ordinary” individual’s concerns.
Mostly though, I tried to write a fun thriller that would keep people turning the pages!
Lisa : I pretty much agree with Harrison — didactic art is rarely good art. That said, I’ve seen a lot of overtly political art that is really powerful—a lot of work coming out of China, for one. And a few years ago I saw a show of contemporary Cuban art that really resonated with me. So I personally like a lot of political art—it all depends on the execution.
In a way that whole discussion in RPT was a discussion I was having in my own mind about writing the book—obviously I’m concerned with politics and ideas, and I have a certain point of view. But I also wanted to write a book that people could read on an airplane and enjoy (I was thrilled when I made a couple of “Hot Summer Beach Reads!” lists). If the artistry doesn’t transcend the politics, your book is likely to be an annoying bore. And I really wanted to avoid that!
Lisa : I first went to Beijing shortly after the Cultural Revolution, in 1979. I lived there for about half a year. I was quite young, and the experience had a tremendous impact on me. I’m not exaggerating when I say that it completely transformed the course of my life.
Beijing has changed so much since then that most of the city is completely unrecognizable from that time. It’s not an easy city to get to know or to navigate, and there are things about it that are frustrating, that can actually make me angry (the wanton destruction of historic neighborhoods and the structures that have generally replaced them I find particularly painful). But I still have a sense of familiarity and homecoming when I go there. And it’s never boring. Plus, if you want to understand China today, Beijing is the epicenter of it all. There’s way more to China than Beijing, and a lot of short-term foreign visitors will drop in on Beijing and Shanghai and come away with a completely distorted perception of what China is about. But if you want to see the cutting edge of China, the center of political and cultural opinion—Beijing is the place to be.
Lisa : This hearkens back to what I touched on in my answer to your first question. A lot of what RPT is about is this idea that most people are not these geniuses who are able to outwit bad guys and forces that are way more powerful than they are. I mean, it’s a nice fantasy, but most of us are worried about our jobs, our futures, our ability to make a home for ourselves in the world. To a certain extent these are existential problems: everyone wrestles on some level with the question of “how am I to live?” But the things that have screwed up Ellie’s life are not things that she can really control. She can’t find a job and wants to get money for college, so she joins the National Guard. Maybe that was a bad decision, but it’s not an unreasonable one for someone in her situation. Then, the leaders of her country, people who are way more powerful than she is, decide to start a war, a war she ends up fighting. She has no say in this. At the time she doesn’t have the knowledge or the experience to even understand what she’s been dragged into.
Which is not to say that each of us isn’t in control of our own moral choices, and that’s what Ellie comes to terms with over the course of the book.
But you know, the whole Abu Ghraib scandal, all the other prisoner abuse scandals, the only people who were ever punished for those were low level functionaries. The approval of torture as a legitimate tool of state power was made by people at the very top. None of them have been called to account. They probably never will be. And those are the “unseen, unknown enemies.” The truth is, we know who they are. We know who they are in the US, and we know who they are in China. They are the people with the most money and the most power, who make the big decisions, and who benefit the most from the power structures that are in place and that they maintain.
Lisa : I really love studying other languages, and if I weren’t such an intrinsically lazy person with a short attention span, I would study a lot more of them. I actually don’t think of Chinese as something that is segregated from the other languages I’ve studied. It’s just another linguistic system to figure out. I look at the way it’s pronounced, I mean, how you actually form the sounds in your mouth, and I see some similarities to German, of all things.
That said, yes, there are no (or few) cognates with English. And the system of characters is totally different, and highly significant culturally.
Which is really the important thing. Being able to speak some Chinese (I am not fluent) totally changes my experience when I go to China. It is like having a key that unlocks all kinds of things culturally that you just don’t have if you can’t talk to people in their own language. I haven’t studied linguistics, but the idea that languages have a profound impact on how different cultures are shaped and how people raised in them think seems pretty obvious.
Lisa : It’s a literary thriller set in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, another place where I’ve spent a fair amount of time, about an American woman whose real estate financier husband has died, and she discovers that he was running a financial scam and has lost all their money, so she’s at a crisis point in her life on multiple levels. She takes an already paid-for vacation in Puerto Vallarta to get her head together, meets an attractive guy on the beach, they go back to her hotel, and things go terribly wrong. The book is also about the intersection of drug cartels, political power, and corruption on both sides of the border. It’s called Getaway, and it will be published by Soho Press in May 2012, and by Harper UK under the title DAY OF THE DEAD. They are also publishing RPT as YEAR OF THE TIGER in April 2012 in the Commonwealth. I’m very excited about all of this.
Raj : Many thanks Lisa for this wonderful discussion.
If you have questions for Lisa, please leave them in the comments.
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Lisa’s official site is here. You can also follow her on Facebook.
Image credit : Lisa Brackmann.
