Wrestling With The Angel: A Life of Janet Frame

299 Pages·2001·3.24 MB·English

by  King

Wrestling with the Angel
A life of Janet Frame
Michael King
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
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First published by Penguin Group (NZ), 2000
Copyright © Michael King 2000
The right of Michael King to be identified as the author of this work in terms of section 96 of the Copyright
Act 1994 is hereby asserted.
Digital conversion by Pindar NZ
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ISBN 978-1-74228-827-7
Contents
Author’s Note
Prologue
One Railway People
Two Kingdom by the Sea
Three Like Cousin Peg …
Four An Unravelling
Five Out of the Depths
Six Except through Storm
Seven Into the World
Eight Sorcerer’s Apprentice
Nine Traveller’s Joy?
Ten In the Warm South
Eleven Towards Sanctuary
Twelve A Home in the Maudsley
Thirteen A Career Resumed
Fourteen On the Rock of Her Self
Fifteen A Roots Crisis
Sixteen Return of the Prodigal
Seventeen Exiled at Home
Eighteen Dunedin and the Messrs Burns
Nineteen Home and Away
Twenty Utopia Discovered and Postponed
Twenty-One Cherishing America
Twenty-Two Lonely for Her Own Kind
Twenty-Three Away from Civilisation
Twenty-Four The Mansfield Connection
Twenty-Five In Search of Silence
Twenty-Six State of Siege
Twenty-Seven A Change of Direction
Twenty-Eight Gathering Fame
Twenty-Nine Ascending Angel
Thirty An Allegiance to Origins
Acknowledgements
Bibliography of Janet Frame’s writing
Bibliography of other works used or cited
Notes
For Maria:the angel at my table
So Jacob was left alone, and there wrestled an angel with him
until daybreak, who, when he saw he was not throwing him,
struck his hip socket so that Jacob’s thigh was dislocated … The
angel said, ‘Let me go for the day is breaking.’ But Jacob
replied, ‘I will not let you go until you bless me’ … The angel
said, ‘Your name will be Jacob no longer, but Israel, because
you have striven with God and with men and have won’ … And
the angel blessed him there. Jacob named that place Peniel, for
‘I saw God face to face and yet my life was preserved …’
GENESIS 32, 24–31
Author Note Janet Frame agreed to cooperate with the writing of this
book but expressed two preferences: that it not be a critical biography
(an analysis of her writing); and that I do not quote verbatim from my
interviews with her. I have complied with both requests. There was no
question I put to her that she did not answer; and she made no attempt
to dissuade me from publishing any information that my research
uncovered. For all of which I thank her, and for permission to quote
from her copyrighted material, published and unpublished.