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Q&A (continued)
…. well, because of the tales she's heard from other people. She has a father who still wants to be Jack Keroauc and a lover who has come in and out of her life baiting her with tales of roaming all over Asia. I think Madeleine feels compelled to become better than the men she's known at going on the road feeling ripe for trouble, and better at knowing how the world really works than her completely whacky mother, a Southern belle who believed for way too long in the future according to Chairman Mao.
Sassy women don't get that way via a happy childhood. If you're content where you are, what motivation do you have to go somewhere else… except maybe south for the winter? You aren't trying to get somewhere the way Madeleine is.
Q. Somewhere such as Lamma?
A. Yes. Lamma is one of the 237 islands in the Hong Kong archipelago, something I know from being a travel writer there. It has lovely beaches when the tide isn't rolling in garbage bags. And cute stucco houses surrounded by banana groves.
Q. What’s the market value of those houses?
A. Middling. I guess every life story is, at its core, about real estate. I sent Madeleine to Lamma because she could afford it on a journalist's salary. In the 1990s Hong Kong became the most expensive city in the world and Lamma was a refuge for ex-pats who weren't living on a corporate housing allowance.
But everyone there is perpetually talking about where they might go next, so getting there is a metaphor for getting to an impermanent home. If I wrote a sequel I'd have to figure out a whole new place to send Madeleine. Actually, I think she's in Cairo now.
Q. Is the bicycle accident early on an example of the chaos theory?
A. In theory, perhaps. If you want to see all forms of chaos, though, just try riding through rush hour traffic in Shanghai. Back in the 1990s when most of the traffic was still from bicycles, I figured your life could take on a new direction based on who you bumped into.
Q. You make the usual disclaimer about this not being autobiography, but you did work as a travel guidebook writer in Hong Kong. The descriptions of Shanghai and Hong Kong… was this novel inspired by the things you couldn't say in a guidebook?
A. There's so much you don't say in a guidebook because your aim is to fire the starting gun to send travelers finding those personal associations for themselves…I mean, guidebook readers don't care if the writer was suicidally depressed while strolling along Nathan Road or fell temporarily in love while cruising on the Li River.
A place is a much a character in a novel as the people are. Shanghai is the most ambitious city I've ever seen. Hong Kong today is like a tai tai - read my book if you don't know what that is - who wears lots of jewels because she might as well show them off before political or economic or environmental Armageddon comes.
Q. Can you recommend a good place to buy pearls in Hong Kong then, or is that going to stir up an anti-capitalist, anti-conspicuous consumption diatribe?
A. Oh my god. In Getting to Lamma, an Enron-like situation happens in Hong Kong. Madeleine sees another example of capitalism amuck. But David, who comes from China, sees a system strong enough to correct itself. Personally, I don't see an incentive for self-correction in a system that works so well for the people charged with the duty of correcting it.
Let's just say I'm working on a new novel that also involves a journey from the island of Manhattan, this time to a tropical paradise where there is an attempt to create a non-greed-oriented utopia. But they have to finance it with venture capital.
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