Jay to Bee: Janet Frame's Letters to William Theophilus Brown

Jay to Bee: Janet Frame's Letters to William Theophilus Brown by Frame, Janet. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9781619027282.

In 1951, just days before her scheduled lobotomy after years in a mental hospital, New Zealand author Janet Frames first collection of short stories unexpectedly won the Hubert Church Memorial Award, one of the countrys most prestigious honors. The procedure was cancelled, and Frame would go on to become one of the seminal authors of contemporary New Zealand literature. During her time at the MacDowell artists colony in New Hampshire, Frame met painter William Theophilus Brown, and their friendship resulted in a whimsical and artistic correspondence that lasted until Frames death in 2004. In Brown, Frame found an ideal listener who inspired her to take the art of letter writing to new creative heights; over the course of their correspondence, Frame included character sketches, personal disclosures, invented tales, and over 300 of her own doodles and collages. This compilation of letters and original illustrations has been published nowhere else in the world, including Frames home country of New Zealand. This moving and enlightening correspondence opens up the hopes, fears, joys, and inner machinations of one of New Zealands most renowned authors, and offers a side of her dramatic personal history often ignored or misunderstood by the public. The closeness and intimacy of the two artists allows for unfettered wordplay, where Janet is merely "Jay", Bill merely "Bee", and granular, unprocessed creativity is allowed to flow freely; the result is a book that vividly captures the brilliantly unique wit that was Janet Frame.