Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Alan Tinkler on the Biographical Myth

"When considering the late Janet Frame's oeuvre, critics often focus on the autobiographical aspects of her writing. Frame was, after all, widely known for her life, particularly her movement in and out of mental institutions during a twelve-year period. Yet Frame's creative enterprise was not autobiography; her writing is first and foremost the rendering of the imagination. In fact, Frame's three-volume autobiography, which appeared as the penultimate project of her literary career, attempts to elucidate, not to justify, her creative project. To borrow the title from her third novel, Frame's project was sharing her imagination--to capture what is at the edge of the alphabet in writing."


From "Janet Frame." by Alan Tinkler, The Review of Contemporary Fiction 24: 2 (2004): 89-124.

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