Mian Mian, Shanghai-based author, on her The Last Book Performance

Only a Mirror Can Dream of a Mirror or Only a Mirror Dreams of…

We would like to thank Mian Mian for both honoring us with her first ever English language reading, her reading of The Last Book at the Schindler House on April 26, 2009, and this first English language writing effort for our documentation of The Last Book project.
—Eloisa Haudenschild & Steve Fagin, haudenschildGarage, Spare Parts

When I first read about the idea of Last Book project and the project invited me to be the reader…I was doing a concert at a place UFOs had once appeared…the light was too bright so I had to wear sunglasses all the time…I liked the concept of the project…it was simple but covered quite a few not simple questions … and … the most interesting part for me was to work with Eloisa and Steve these two such different producers but both so super real, creative open minded people. They are full of love and both of them never stopped being a boy and a girl, but at the same time also being professional – serious and very well organized … and … one of them speaks with Chicago accent, very loudly. For the art world they are too clean. They speak that kind of language that simply comes from the future with sunflower love and super talent. For me art is more about the moments…mostly about those super tender moments when those super intense “things” meet together … it is the shape of the joy, the questions, the possibility of love …

But how can I be an English reader? I did not finish high school…I never read an English book…I never read my own book in English when I do promotions all over the world…my English education came mostly at bars, nightclubs in Shanghai when I was young…so how can I read this impossible Mary Gaitskill text? I think this is one of the reasons why the project invited me…they wanted to watch. I’m thinking about the Kindle now (I’m in Beijing) to think of the Kindle is just like thinking about a criminal who has escaped from prison or a serial killer living in a strange small town with a strange voice…middle sex…mostly a woman but if you think he is a boy or man that is more scary still…anyway…the Kindle is a perfect fiction…it’s a mirror of our fears…but the Kindle helped me, a lot…every morning at 6 o’clock I got up and started my day by listening to the Kindle read Mary Gaitskill’s impossible to read text…the writing of the text is very intense. I never understood the writing because there were so many new and difficult words for me. So I tried to catch the chance and energy of the story by just studying those Mary Gaitskill words…although I had no idea what she wrote I eventually found a perfect way to feel her writing I listened to it breathe. I sensed Mary Gaitskill is a great writer who tries very hard to be a great writer…she is not a mirror but a broken glass…most of time she is cutting herself…thinking about this made me love her so much…but I never would want to be a writer like her…to wish to be like her would be like dancing with a vampire.

In fact, this is first time I’ve done a book reading in English and my reading is a perfect mirror between the Kindle and Mary Gaitskill’s text, I was being lured into a broken glass. But the Kindle is something more still. It is even more surreal than the plastic fantastic city, Shanghai…the Kindle is thought to be the future…it’s not a future I will return to. And Mary Gaitskill? I imagine she does not care about the future, otherwise, she would not write this way, I guess?

When I arrived in LA, at the Schindler House, the place of the reading, it felt to me like the place that must have had the first communist meeting in LA…it’s like I saw some tall man walk around the house as in old times and communist women dancing. I liked the director of the house…she is like a mirror…

But I was sooo distracted, worrying about my English as I rehearsed for the reading of Mary Gaitskill’s text…I should have not worried sooo much because it’s all about the moment, the performance, when all dances together…but I’m a real Shanghai girl…most of them are superficial…we always want to be the winner when we go to bed with the boy we really love we never be really relax and be really cool…

In this Last Book project there were moments, during different steps of the project that felt like pure art for me…but they were very private…those days staying at Eloisa’s home and seeing the members of the Haudenschild family, seeing how they live together, how they give their love at every moment to each other…it’s really special…it made me less scared of the Kindle, every morning at 6 o’clock when I started to study those words…and every morning at 9 when I saw Monica who always made me think about David Lynch movie.

In closing, give all my love to everybody who worked on the project and those who came to the event…it’s midnight in Beijing where I sit…I know after writing this I will disappear from the mirror…slowly…with Chicago accent that I learned from a genius…

After this project…I will finally be able to be a communist dancer…a tall man’s lover (I was not able to have sex with tall man)…a great S&M writer (it’s about how two people trust each other)…I will make an unbroken mirror become a lesbian mirror, one who does not show us our vanity…marry an Argentine revolutionary leader and finally speak English with a Chicago accent…I just love it sooo much…

…one thousand ideas to be tender…this is The Last Book project made for me.

- Mian Mian

p.s.
When I finished the project and was at the airport in LA on my way back to Shanghai the plane had problems…so we had to stay in LA overnight, at a small hotel…where I went to a McDonalds at midnight…

About Mian Mian
One of the most important writers from China’s new generation, Mian Mian has lived up to her reputation as China’s best bad girl novelist. She drew wide attention from the literati starting at the age of 17 when she became the first Chinese writer to ever describe a drug related life. Her characteristic flavor of “cruel youth” and her serious attitude towards self-reflection quickly attracted a large following of young readers. Her novels have been translated into 15 different languages and published worldwide. Candy, Mian Mian’s magnum opus, an underground best seller, is regarded as the most remarkable adolescent literature in China. In April 2000, the government officially banned her book and subsequently the rest of her books. However by this time, hundreds of thousands of pirated copies had already been circulated. Mian Mian’s literature had exerted tremendous influence on the Chinese X and Y generations. She has become a cultural icon for a generation of Chinese youth who value the authenticity and honesty of her portrayal of the future of the new Shanghai. In 2009 she published her new novel, Panda Sex, in China and France, soon to be published in English. Click here to visit Mian Mian’s website.

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