Janet Frame

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Janet Paterson Clutha (28 August 1924 – 29 January 2004,) was a New Zealand writer who published under the name Janet Frame.

She wrote books, short stories, poetry, juvenile fiction, and an autobiography.

Frame's fame derived from her personal life as well as her literary career.

Frame was supposed for a lobotomy that was postponed just days before the procedure when her debut collection of short stories was unexpectedly named a national literary award.

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Literary career

Frame arrived in New Zealand in late 1956 and the next seven years were the most prolific in terms of publication. She lived and worked in Europe, mainly based in London, with brief trips to Ibiza and Andorra. In May 1958, she legally changed her name to Nene Janet Paterson Clutha in part to make it more difficult to find and recognize Mori chief Tamati Waka Nene, who she admired, as well as the Clutha River, which was a source of creative inspiration. Frame still suffered with anxiety and depression, and in September 1958, she introduced herself to the Maudsley in London. Alan Miller, an American-trained psychiatrist who worked at John Money at Johns Hopkins University, said she had never suffered from schizophrenia. Frame began regular therapy sessions with psychiatrist Robert Hugh Cawley, who encouraged her to continue writing in an attempt to reduce the adverse effects of her time in and out of psychiatric hospitals. Frame dedicated seven of her books to Cawley.

Frame returned to New Zealand in 1963, but not before residing in rural north Suffolk (near the town of Eye) which inspired her to write her 1965 book The Adaptable Man. In 1965, she was granted the Burns Fellowship at the University of Otago. She later lived in several areas of New Zealand's North Island, including Auckland, Taranaki, Wanganui, the Horowhenua, Palmerston North, Waiheke, Browns Bay, and Levin.

Frame travelled extensively, occasionally to Europe, but mainly to the United States, where she accepted residencies at the MacDowell and Yaddo artists' colonies. Frame developed close friendships with several Americans as a result of their lengthy stays in the United States. Theophilus Brown (whom she later referred to as "the most significant experience of my life") and his long-time companion Paul John Wonner, poet May Sarton, John Phillips Marquand, and Alan Lelchuck were among the artists on display. Frame's one-time university tutor/counsellor, and longtime friend John Money worked in North America from 1947 to 2010, and Frame stayed at his home in Baltimore frequently.

Frame's autobiography (To the Isles-land, An Angel at my Table, and The Envoy from Mirror City) traces her life's journey to her return to New Zealand in 1963, a three-volume autobiography. Patrick White, an Australian novelist, described the first two volumes as "among the world's wonders." Laura Jones, a writer, and director Jane Campion adapted the trilogy for television broadcast. An Angel at My Table, an award-winning feature film, was eventually released as an award-winning feature film. Kerry Fox, Alexia Keogh, and Karen Fersson portrayed the author at different ages. Frame's autobiographies were more popular than any of her previous books, and Campion's popular film adaptation of the texts attracted a new generation of readers to her work. Frame's successes have gradually pushed the frame into the public eye.

Frame was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1983 for contributions to literature in the Queen's Birthday Honours. That year, To the Is-land was also named with the Goodman Fielder Wattie Book of the Year Award, New Zealand's highest literary award.

The autobiographies were supposed to "set the record straight" about her experience and in particular her mental health. However, critical and public debate has remained on her mental stability. The New Zealand Medical Journal published an article by a medical specialist who suggested that Frame be on the autism spectrum in 2007, which was denied by the author's literary executor.

Frame's life span, she was largely published by American company George Braziller, winning numerous literary awards in her native New Zealand, as well as the Commonwealth Writers' Prize in 1989 for her final book, The Carpathians.

Frame was the country's highest civil honour on Friday, receiving the Order of New Zealand for the sixteenth time. Frame held foreign membership of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in her native New Zealand, she received two honorary doctorates as well as the distinction of cultural icon. Frame's name was once a contender for the Nobel Prize in literature, most significantly in 1998, after a journalist discovered her name on a list that had been published in alphabetical order, and again five years later, when a respected literary critic at the Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter, incorrectly predicted that Frame would win the coveted award.

Frame's writing shifted from Marxist and social realist to feminist and poststructuralist, with academic criticism from the late 1970s to feminist and poststructuralist. In later years, book-length monographs on Frame were published. These included Patrick Evans' bio-critical contributions to the "Twayne's World Authors Series," Janet Frame (1977), Gina Mercer's feminist interpretation of the novels and autobiographies, Janet Frame: Subversive Fictions (1992), and Judith Dell Panny's allegorical reading of the works, as well as Judith Dell Panny's feminist interpretation of Janet Frame (1992). Jeanne Delbaere's collection of essays was first published in 1978, with a new one titled The Ring of Fire: Essays on Janet Frame published in 1992. The University of Otago in Dunedin hosted a conference dedicated to a reflection of Frame's work the same year. Many of the papers were published in a special issue of The Journal of New Zealand Literature, and many of them were published.

Michael King, a New Zealand historian, published his approved biography of Frame, Wrestling with the Angel in 2000. The book was simultaneously published in New Zealand and North America, with British and Australian editions appearing in later years. Both praise and criticism were given to King's award-winning and detailed work. Some questioned the extent to which Frame aided her biographer's hand, while others said he didn't have trouble coping with the complexity and subtlety of his subject. King publicly acknowledged that he withheld information "that may have posed a point of embarray and sadness to her" and that he adopted publisher Christine Cole Catley's view of "compassionate truth" adding to the scandal. "A summary of findings and conclusions that support biography's main goals, but not without the revelation of facts that could place the living subject in unwarranted embarrassment, emotional or physical pain, or a nervous or psychiatric breakdown." The King defended his scheme and said that future biographies on Frame would eventually fill the void left by his own efforts.

Frame died in Dunedin in January 2004, aged 79, from acute myeloid leukaemia, just days after being one of the first recipients of the Arts Foundation of New Zealand Icon Awards, which aim to honor and recognize New Zealand artists who have achieved the highest standards of artistic expression. A number of posthumous works have been published, including a volume of poetry titled The Goose Bath, which was awarded New Zealand's top poetry award in 2007. Critics who believed the posthumous award "set an uncomfortable precedent" reacted angrily. Towards Another Summer, a novella that was inspired by a weekend Frame spent with British journalist Geoffrey Moorhouse and his family, was also published posthumously. In 2008, two previously unpublished short stories set in mental hospitals appeared in The New Yorker. In 2010, the New Yorker published another previously unpublished short story. Penguin Books' New Zealand branch acquired the rights to publish three new editions of Frame's book in March 2011. These were Janet Frame in Her Own Words (2011), a series of interviews and nonfiction, Gorse is Not People: New and Uncollected Stories (2012) (published in the United States as Between My Father and the King: New and Uncollected Stories), and the book In the Memorial Room (2013).

Gifted, a book by New Zealand academic and former Frame biographer Patrick Evans, was published in 2010 and then shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. The tale is based on a fictionalized account of Janet Frame and Frank Sargeson's time as a guest on his Takapuna property in 1955–56, an age recalled in a number of paintings by Frame and her contemporaries and dramatized in Campion's film, An Angel at My Table (1990). Evans' book was staged at the Christchurch Arts Festival in 2013, and a tour of New Zealand's north and south islands was published on the 22nd. Despite receiving praise from critical reviews, Frame's literary executor and niece, Pamela Gordon, who said the production was "planned to demean Frame." Gordon, who has also sluggish in Campion's portrayal of Frame, has stated that Evans' theatrical version of her beloved cousin gave an inaccurate representation of her popular cousin. When festival organiser Philip Tremewan, defended the performance, Conrad Newport maintained that Gordon was "overprotective of [Frame's] legacy." Evans stuck to the facts: "I have publicly defended her work and popularized it for two to three generations of students." You only have to look at the title to see what my attitude is in Gifted, the play and novel. "I honestly don't think I have anything to apologize for."

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Awards and honours

• 1951: Hubert Church Prose Award (The Lagoon and other Stories)
• 1956: New Zealand Literary Fund Grant
• 1958: New Zealand Literary Fund Award for Achievement (Owls Do Cry)
• 1964: Hubert Church Prose Award (Scented Gardens for the Blind); New Zealand Literary Fund Scholarship in Letters.
• 1965: Robert Burns Fellowship, University of Otago, Dunedin, NZ
• 1967: "Buckland Literary Award." (The Reservoir and Other Stories/A State of Siege)
• 1969: New Zealand Literary Fund Award (The Pocket Mirror: Poems)
• 1971: Buckland Literary Award (Intensive Care); Hubert Church Prose Award. (Intensive Care)
• 1972: President of Honour: P.E.N. International New Zealand Centre, Wellington, NZ
• 1973: James Wattie Book of the Year Award (Daughter Buffalo)
• 1974: Hubert Church Prose Award (Daughter Buffalo); Winn-Manson Menton Fellowship.
• 1978: Honorary Doctor of Literature (D.Litt. Honoris Causa) University of Otago, Dunedin, NZ
• 1979: Buckland Literary Award (Living in the Maniototo)
• 1980: New Zealand Book Award for Fiction (Living in the Maniototo)
• 1983: Buckland Literary Award; Sir James Wattie Book of the Year Award (To the Is-Land); C.B.E. (Commander, Order of the British Empire)
• 1984: Frank Sargeson Fellowship, University of Auckland, NZ
• 1984: New Zealand Book Award for Non-Fiction (An Angel at My Table); Sir James Wattie Book of the Year Award (An Angel at My Table); Turnovsky Prize for Outstanding Achievement in the Arts
• 1985: Sir James Wattie Book of the Year Award (The Envoy from Mirror City)
• 1986: New Zealand Book Award for Non-Fiction (The Envoy from Mirror City); Honorary Foreign Member: The American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters
• 1989: Ansett New Zealand Book Award for Fiction; Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book (The Carpathians)
• 1990: O.N.Z. (Member, Order of New Zealand)
• 1992: Honorary Doctor of Literature (D.Litt.), University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ
• 1994: Massey University Medal, Massey University, Palmerston North, NZ
• 2003: Arts Foundation of New Zealand Icon Award; New Zealand Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement
• 2007: Montana Book Award for Poetry (The Goose Bath)