The Redhead Effect

Janet Frame was a redhead. Not only that, she had famously wild frizzy hair. It's the first thing everyone who met her when she was young, mentions about her.

We know that as a child she hated the constant attention to what was regarded as her 'strange' hair. It seems she became quite hypersensitive about it, being subjected to the constant taunting from a very young age, that almost all redheads are subject to. Probably the frizzy hair only increased the mockery. One can imagine the teasing was mostly a bantering good natured but aggressive "Hey, ginger!", but she has made it clear in her writing that she sometimes wished the earth would swallow her up.

Now what is it about red hair, that gets people's backs up?

I have been interested to find that I can identify the redhead effect in some of the commentaries on Janet Frame, in which clearly someone who met her superficially has formed a strong opinion that she was very odd (often they'd been told this beforehand so were ready for this interpretation) - but then it seems that without realising it, they have included her 'crazy' hair as one of signals of her difference, or her 'eccentricity', or even of her 'madness'.

Here's an example of a report, from an eyewitness who met Janet Frame shortly after she was released from the years of abusive punishment in psychiatric hospitals, from his book* published in 2008:

"there was something very strange about her - shyness, hypersensitivity, timidity, fear, to the point of morbidity, certainly; but even beyond all that, something intangible I felt very strongly, with a sort of animal apprehension when we were young; something that expressed itself physically, in her body language, her clothes, but in the body itself, neck, skin, hair."

So the red hair effect is even felt by people who one might have thought were otherwise rational!

It's often mentioned as if it was a 'symptom' of what is commonly regarded as her 'oddness'.

And yet, how could she be responsible for the red hair? In what way is red hair dysfunctional psychologically?

It's not unreasonable to suggest that because her hair was regarded as so odd, that it led observers to assume she must be a strange abnormal person, and so her red hair may well have contributed to the misdiagnosis of schizophrenia.

*CK Stead, Bookself (2008). One can understand the shyness Stead describes, in the context of Frame's recent return to the world, but 'morbidity' seems an excessive word in that Stead also makes it clear elsewhere that Frame was friendly, warm, funny, well-read, smart and a great conversationalist, and the fact that she was writing one of NZ's most highly acclaimed novels of all time, at the time, does indicate she can't have been in too bad a condition. (A startling contradiction to his sketch here!)

It's poignant to hear of the fear Frame showed at that time, undoubtedly the post-traumatic result of the treatment she had sustained, and remarkable to realise what courage it must have taken to mix with the complicated sohisticated literati she found herself amongst. How strong and determined she must have been, to survive, and to get on with her writing now she was free.

It should also be noted that Stead's observation of Janet Frame as having strange clothes, is likely to indicate that there is also a class judgement being made. Most of the Sargeson circle were firmly of middle class origins. It's pretty clear that if Janet Frame had been from a wealthier family of higher social status, that she would not have been labelled as insane, and her 'eccentricity' would have been overlooked just as the middle class are blind to their own peccadilloes.

Just Do It

"The only certainty about writing and trying to be a writer is that it has to be done, not dreamed of or planned and never written, or talked about (the ego eventually falls apart like a soaked sponge), but simply written: it's a dreadful, awful fact that writing is like any other work."

Janet Frame (The Envoy From Mirror City)

Biographical Myths: Busted

Introducing a series of exposés of some of the commonly encountered biographical myths about Janet Frame.

If possible I'll investigate why particular fallacies have snowballed so far away from any kernel of truth. In part, it's because of the human tendency to embroider and exaggerate to make a good story.

Sometimes there is an easily discernible deliberate attempt to shape the Janet Frame myth - Frame herself did it, for instance, in her Beginnings essay in which her aim was to secure financial aid for her writing. So she made sure to give a good case for needing to write. She lived to regret that, and tried to suppress the essay subsequently!

She also clearly shaped the 'recluse' myth as a method of self-protection from the harassment suffered by all prominent people, and also to deter attempts by superficial people to waste her time by socialising with her as if she were some trophy.

To be discerning in the company you keep, and to be anti-social, are two quite different things. Janet Frame was the former.

In the early years of their friendship, Frank Sargeson often played up Frame's vulnerability in order to try to secure her some sort of funding. Other friends protected her loyally from unwanted advances, but this gate-keeping was sometimes without her knowledge and now and then more than a little motivated by possessiveness, or to cement themselves as having a rare and special status in Frame's circle and to exclude any competition.

The rule of silence she demanded from her friends and family did tend to encourage the wild speculations that form the basis of many journalistic portraits. I've been looking recently at the obituaries published around the world in early 2004, and it has been a shock to me to see how much misinformation there is, even from obit writers who ostensibly knew Frame well. Even one of the most accurate obits contains the extraordinary claim that she was "pathologically shy" - which is not a diagnosis, and has not issued from any qualified source. It's an invention.

She was shy, certainly, as are many if not most people in appropriate contexts, but her shyness had no part at all in her medical misdiagnosis, and it was a situation-specific shyness and was not excessive, as is indicated by the number of eye witnesses who attest to her cheerful nature, wit, and gift for brilliant conversation (see for example, CK Stead 2008).

The fact that Janet Frame had the discipline and motivation to at some point walk away from a convivial group and go to her study in solitude and to write a masterpiece, appears to have really really annoyed some people. So they pathologise her ability to separate life and work.

And apparently readers who never even met her can make their own decision about what was "wrong" with her. Many people assume that because of her brush with medical misadventure, she must have has something "wrong" with her.

I believe that most intelligent readers do realise that what was "wrong" was the narrow punitive society of the time, and the authoritarian and obtuse medical system. Unfortunately those people haven't written the potted bios one finds dotted around the Internet! (Perhaps they've written the obscure ponderous theses!)

Another factor in the Frame mythography is that embittered researchers or others spurned by Frame, or fellow writers out-shone by her, seem to have on occasion carried out vindictive or envious campaigns characterising her as disordered in order to disparage the value of her work.

This tendency has survived her death, alas.

Michael King, Frame's biographer, gathered a fair bit of evidence for that same phenomenon, but while Frame was alive it was too sensitive a subject for him to explore too deeply. He does touch on it in the biography so a careful reading shows the trend.

Ironically, some of Frame's (and King's) detractors claim that King withheld the "truth" about Frame, and merely reported a 'compassionate truth' about Frame while she was still alive.

Of course these commentators insist that the withheld 'truth' is a derogatory 'truth' about Frame herself - because why would King withhold a truth that revealed a Frame more sane, more self-directing and stronger than the popularly imagined 'Janet'? (Why indeed? - it's a good question!)

One of the stories that King did not tell, was in fact the story of the depth of resentment that a few of her associates harboured towards Frame. King didn't tell (much) about the deliberate character assassination... There were various reasons, including the fact that it would not have been compassionate for Janet (who was capable of deep compassion and forgiveness) if King opened old wounds and relitigated obsolete battles, that she had no wish to revisit.

But King wasn't protecting Frame as much as he was protecting those in whose interest it had been to foster the various myths about her. And of course while some of the protagonists were still alive he couldn't tell the whole story for fear of creating new literary feuds, or involving himself in litigation.

Some of the worst betrayals and false portrayals of Janet Frame may not even be told in my own lifetime, but I have some satisfaction in being confident that it will all come out in the wash, in the end.

Because the evidence is all out there...

Radio France documentary on Janet Frame

French radio journalist Anne de Giafferri visited New Zealand over the southern hemisphere summer and travelled around the country meeting people, looking at our beautiful environment, especially the native bush, researching New Zealand literature especially the Maori writers, and recording the sounds of birds.

Anne also gathered material for a documentary on Janet Frame while she was here, that was later broadcast on Radio France as part of the UNE VIE, UNE OEUVRE series.

Anne talked to a few friends and associates and family of Janet Frame, as well as consulting a variety of academics to hear the latest proliferation of multi-faceted theories that Janet Frame's writing continues to spawn, even (or should that be especially) in France.

The Radio France web site contains a short biography listing some of the most recent editions of French translations of Janet Frame's work.

Janet Frame's books have been well-received in France. Along with Katherine Mansfield, who of course lived in France, Janet Frame is the best known New Zealand writer in France, although the 2006 special focus on New Zealand writers as part of the Les Belles Etrangères initiative has managed to bring more Kiwi writers to the attention of the French public.

"tender, funny, luminous, brave, unique"

Found a review today (at http://www.que-leer.com/633/janet-frame-hacia-otro-verano.html) of Hacia Otro Verano the recently released Spanish translation of Towards Another Summer.

I don't speak Spanish so I passed the text through an online Spanish to English translator, and gathered that the following is a fair representation of some of the expressed sentiments of the reviewer Alicia Misrahi:

"With the same poetic and gracious insistence with which the waves lick the flanks of a sunk boat, Frame offers a great personal fragment to us in this sincere novel"

"Frame undresses the soul and the feelings of Grace Cleave, her protagonist and alter ego, as only the great writers can do, and transforms each detail and each small episode of their fight to integrate themselves in society"

"In the meantime, we, those who read this, have learned to love Grace/Janet."

The computer translation is clumsy but it's clearly a lyrically written sensitive review, in line with many of the English language reviews (see the Janet Frame Literary Trust web site NEWS page for excerpts and links to reviews).

Photo above is of Charles Brasch and Janet Frame at Charles' holiday home on the Otago peninsula, in April 1966. New Zealand academic author and critic CK Stead is in the background. The photo was taken by poet Ruth Dallas. The title of the novel Towards Another Summer was taken from a poem by Charles Brasch.

Virago Classic Author of the Month

Virago Press, Janet Frame's new publisher for the UK and Canada, is featuring her on their web site as their March 'Classic author of the month'.

Last January Virago released their beautiful new edition of Janet Frame's bestselling autobiography An Angel at My Table, "one of the greatest autobiographies of the twentieth century" (Sunday Times).

And then in July came the exquisite posthumously published novel Towards Another Summer which led Alice Sebold to say "Janet Frame is, and will remain, divine." This novel has won hearts around the world and has received glowing reviews. The first of the foreign translations has already been published (the Spanish Hacia Otro Ventro) and the US edition from Counterpoint Press is soon to be released). The Virago paperback will be released in the middle of this year.

Meanwhile this month Virago reissue one of Frame's most famous novels, one that changed the way the world perceived the treatment of "insane" people. Frame's unique perspective of having been trapped in a false diagnosis, and incarcerated in hospital wards, allowed her a privileged perspective. She came back out into the world and used her wrting gifts to speak for the people who had no voice. "One of the most impressive accounts of madness to be found in literature ... A masterpiece" (Anita Brookner). The 2009 Virago edition of Faces in the Water has a perceptive and enlightening introduction by novelist Hilary Mantel.

Janet Frame's career is not over

“I’m a short story addict, both reading and writing them,

and I always keep hoping for the perfect story.”
- Janet Frame

Last week the University Bookshop in Dunedin hosted the launch of the NZ edition of Prizes: Selected Short Stories by Janet Frame. It turned out that the launch coincided with the fresher Toga Party at the University of Otago, in which thousands of students, some draped with sheets and some not, later battled in the streets hurling raw eggs (and worse things) at each other and at the general public.

The book launch had a very good atmosphere, and there was a reasonable crowd considering there was a riot simmering outside, with masses of drunken students walking past, chanting aggressively, as they gathered nearby for their parade.

Luckily the students were oblivious to the literary gathering. Meanwhile, barricaded inside the bookshop there was a fantastic atmosphere and Emeritus Professor Jocelyn Harris gave an excellent speech, in which she quoted some passages from several stories and made connections and proposed analyses that were genuinely enlightening, and that many of those listening said had made them eager to read the stories in a new light.

Dunedin's Channel 9 TV had earlier interviewed yours truly along with UBS buyer Bronwyn Wylie-Gibb at the bookshop, about the release of this tenth volume in the Janet Frame Collection.

I also gave a short speech at the launch, outlining the timeline for the Janet Frame Literary Trust, which was founded ten years ago by Janet Frame, with great forethought, to protect her posthumous interests.

I then reviewed the progress that the Janet Frame Literary Trust has made in the five years since Janet Frame's death. It was cause for celebration that the publication of Prizes meant that all Janet's back list was now simultaneously in print in New Zealand. (At any one time there were usually up to ten titles in print in NZ, but some of the lesser known novels might not have been reprinted if the estate had not agreed with the publisher to issue the double volumes.) The whole of the attractive uniform edition was on display to admire. And of course not only is the entire back list now in print, but of course there is also the freshly illustrated children's book, the posthumous book of poetry and the posthumous novel, all of which have been critically acclaimed as well as strong sellers.

I spoke briefly about the reason for the release of a "Selected" ("best of") published stories, rather than an enormous door-stop "Collected" stories. I pointed out that the definitive "Collected" ("complete works") editions are usually issued at the end of an author's career. But the Frame estate is still publishing "new" formerly unpublished stories (as for instance the two remarkable New Yorker stories in 2008), and so it would be premature to issue a "Collected" stories until we have assessed all of the unpublished story manuscripts.

I assured those listening, to their amusement, and enthusiastic applause, that: "Janet Frame's career is not over."

The first reviews of Prizes: Selected Stories are in:

Graham Beattie on his Beattie's Book Blog declared of the selection of 42 stories:

"not a dud among them."

Elizabeth Alley reviewed the collection in the NZ Listener (archived online after March 12).

She said:

"The real value of such a collection is the opportunity to appreciate the versatility of her style, the range and power of her writing, and - yes - "the magic of words" over stories that spanned 1952 to 1983."