An emphasis on highbrow literature

The Janet Frame Estate's magnificent literary agent Andrew Wylie was interviewed last year for New Republic (7 October 2013). They called him "the reigning king of the backlist" and note that "his distaste for commercial fiction" is "legendary".

"It might seem that Wylie’s single-minded emphasis on highbrow literature would have made him an early casualty of the turmoil in book publishing. Instead, he has thrived—throughout the rise of the mega-bookstores, the emergence of Amazon, and the e-book turf war over digital rights and royalties."

The Wylie Agency's client list is staggering: as you start at the beginning of the alphabet, you notice the procession of great and good names, alive and dead. The estates! For instance, the Diane Arbus Estate, J.G. Ballard Estate, Jorge Luis Borges Estate,  Saul Bellow Estate, Roberto Bolaño Estate, Joseph Brodsky Estate, William Burroughs Estate, Italo Calvino Estate, Raymond Carver Estate... And the sparks fly impressively, right until the end of the list.

Some quotable quotes from the man himself:

"Unless you’re a terribly bad writer, you are never going to have too many readers."

"The Frankfurt Book Fair is my idea of heaven."

Charles and Janet at DWRF 2014

Dear Charles, Dear Janet

Graphic: Otago Daily Times

Dunedin Writers & Readers Festival 2014

 

A portrait of the growth of the friendship between legendary Dunedinites Janet Frame and Charles Brasch using their own words written to and about each other: correspondence, poems, diary and memoir. This scripted reading premiered as ‘Can You Hear Me, Whangaparaoa?’  in front of a full house at the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival in 2009 and is presented in Dunedin for the first time courtesy of the Janet Frame Literary Trust.  “This was such a clever idea - a programme of readings from unpublished correspondence between two towering NZ literary figures, Janet Frame and Charles Brasch… Well done whomever it was that came up with this idea.” (Graham Beattie)  “This was a fabulous glimpse into the lives of Janet Frame and Charles Brasch, and certainly highlighted the mischievous sense of humour of Janet! I felt I came away with a real taste of the characters of these remarkable individuals.” (Vanda Symon)  “It was an original and moving tribute, attended by a big crowd. Brasch’s and Frame’s voices came strongly down the years; some things have changed, some are the same. Brasch writing to Frame that “bulldozers on Waiheke sounds like sacrilege” is all too familiar, but Frame’s description of Brasch as having “discipline instead of marrow in his bones” could not be applied to too many people now.”  (Christchurch City Libraries Blog) FREE Door entry  |  Saturday 10 May  |  Dunningham Suite, Dunedin Public Library  |  1pm-1.45pm www.dunedinwritersfestival.co.nz

"Beautiful additions to Frame's extraordinary oeuvre" ~ The Australian

Skeletons of the fabulous

 

Felicity Plunkett of The Australian newspaper has reviewed two new Janet Frame titles that were recently published in Australia: The Mijo Tree (Penguin 2013) and Between My Father and the King (Wilkins Farago 2013).

 

It's a superbly intelligent and perceptive review, well worth reading (the reviewer is herself a poet).

 

 "Like the mijo seed, Frame sought an exceptional creative life. She tore the dark fruit of her early days apart and found in them seed for work that continues to appear, blossoming in this, her posthumous phase."

 

 

"Many of Janet Frame's stories are boned with the skeleton of the fabulous. With their 'once upon a time', their anthropomorphism and their small, clear fairytale phrasing, only gradually do they reveal their powerful musculature and darker currents."

 

 

"These two works are beautiful additions to Frame's extraordinary oeuvre."

Janet Frame Memorial Lecture 2014

The Janet Frame Memorial Lecture 2014

will be held on Monday the 10th of March 2014 at 6.15 pm

at the Adam Auditorium of the Wellington City Galley

Doors open at 5.45 pm

Admission is free

 

The Mouth of the Whale (The Power of Pictures)

by Gavin Bishop

 

In his lecture celebrated children's author and illustrator Gavin Bishop will focus on the role of illustration in literature.

 

The Janet Frame Memorial Lecture 2014 is sponsored by the New Zealand Society of Authors in association with the New Zealand Festival and the City Gallery Wellington.

 

 

 

Janet Frame stories in Slovenian

 

Vstopate v človeško srce

(You are now entering the human heart

and other stories)

Janet Frame

Lud Literatura

http://www.ludliteratura.si/knjiga/vstopate-v-clovesko-srce/

Still winning prizes

Ten years after her death, Janet Frame's writing is still picking up awards. The radio drama adaptation of her 3-volume autobiography AN ANGEL AT MY TABLE (first broadcast on BBC4 last January) recently won the BBC Radio Drama Award for Best Series at the 2014 BBC Audio Drama Awards.

Lorraine Ashbourne (who plays Janet Frame), Philip Glenister (who presented the award), Anita Sullivan and Karen Rose
(BBC Media Centre).

 

Congratulations to Sweet Talk, to Anita Sullivan and Karen Rose, and to all the actors!

Of course for such a win to take place there are also a host of other people that have contributed to the success of the final production in our own various ways, and I'm sure we are all feeling pleased and satisfied that the excellence of this adaptation has been acknowledged.

See more about the adaptation on Anita Sullivan's web page.

For more context see my earlier posts:

http://slightlyframous.blogspot.co.nz/2014/01/janet-frame-serial-shortlisted-for-bbc.html

 http://slightlyframous.blogspot.co.nz/2013/01/bbc-adapts-janet-frames-autobiography.html

http://slightlyframous.blogspot.co.nz/2012/11/new-bbc-radio-adaptation.html

NZ Herald Greatest New Zealanders

As part of their 150th Anniversary celebrations late last year the New Zealand Herald ran a 'New Zealander of the Year' series in which they retrospectively named our 'Greatest New Zealanders'.

Janet Frame was accorded this honour twice: New Zealander of the Year 1957 ('Literary Spellbinder') when her first novel Owls Do Cry was published, and New Zealander of the Year 1983 ('A Writer's Story') when she published To the Is-Land, the first volume of her bestselling autobiography.