Author(s): Simone Oettli-van Delden

NZ Non Fiction

"Surfaces of Strangeness" explores the discourses that surround the concept of madness. It examines the way in which madness is expressed, especially in literature, the uses to which it is put by particular authors and the effect that this has on the reader. Discourses of madness provide an effective means of exploring and expressing the workings of the human mind, but they can also be a devastating means of manipulating people. "Surfaces of Strangeness" focuses primarily on the autobiography and novels of Janet Frame, and examines her life and work by exploring how madness is expressed in specific works - what it can be made to represent, what it can reveal and what it can conceal. The concept of madness is powerfully present in Frame's work: in the events and experiences she describes in her autobiography, and in the representations throughout her novels of the perturbed and perturbing inner worlds of those who are rejected by society. Her works reflect her own development, revealing the way in which the power of the term 'schizophrenia', imposed by others, is vanquished by replacing it with the term 'author'. Her success, as such, is a remarkable achievement, requiring great courage and skill and bearing invaluable testimony to the workings of the human mind. Simone Oettli-vam Delden was born in Amsterdam and grew up in New Zealand. She teaches English and New Zealand literature at the University of Geneva.