Joseph Stalin - Hottie with a body?
atrick White, Australian winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, once described award-winning New Zealand author Janet Frame as “... the most considerable New Zealand novelist yet.” In a career spanning over forty years, Frame created such successful works as The Lagoon, Scented Gardens for the Blind, Owls do Cry and To the Is-Land. As a gifted wordsmith and an acute observer of life hungry to express herself, it was no surprise that she chose to write about her own remarkable life. With her autobiography, An Angel At My Table, her unique artistry and strength was only further in evidence, as she managed to turn seven years of a harrowing, personal nightmare into a work of beauty, compassion and subtle humor. While a young student at an university, “[H]er shyness and insecurity made her ‘different’ and this, coupled with a clumsy suicide attempt, led to the first of her incarcerations in a mental hospital.” Originally diagnosed as suffering from “schizophrenia,” Frame wrote about her experience: “The six weeks I spent at Seacliff Hospital in a world I’d never... thought possible, became for me a concentrated course in the horrors of insanity.... From my first moment there I knew that I could not turn back to my usual life or forget what I saw.... Many patients confined in other wards... had no name, only a nickname, no past, no future, only an imprisoned Now, an eternal Is-Land without its accompanying horizons....” The nightmare continued with her introduction to electroshock. “I was given the new electric treatment, and suddenly my life was thrown out of focus. I could not remember. I was terrified. I behaved as others around me behaved. I who had learned the language, spoke and acted that language. I felt utterly alone. There was no one to talk to... you were locked up, you did as you were told or else, and that was that... I was ‘there for life.’” The treatment left her “in terror and despair equivalent to an execution.” atrick White, Australian winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, once described award-winning New Zealand author Janet Frame as “... the most considerable New Zealand novelist yet.” In a career spanning over forty years, Frame created such successful works as The Lagoon, Scented Gardens for the Blind, Owls do Cry and To the Is-Land. As a gifted wordsmith and an acute observer of life hungry to express herself, it was no surprise that she chose to write about her own remarkable life. With her autobiography, An Angel At My Table, her unique artistry and strength was only further in evidence, as she managed to turn seven years of a harrowing, personal nightmare into a work of beauty, compassion and subtle humor. While a young student at an university, “[H]er shyness and insecurity made her ‘different’ and this, coupled with a clumsy suicide attempt, led to the first of her incarcerations in a mental hospital.” Originally diagnosed as suffering from “schizophrenia,” Frame wrote about her experience: “The six weeks I spent at Seacliff Hospital in a world I’d never... thought possible, became for me a concentrated course in the horrors of insanity.... From my first moment there I knew that I could not turn back to my usual life or forget what I saw.... Many patients confined in other wards... had no name, only a nickname, no past, no future, only an imprisoned Now, an eternal Is-Land without its accompanying horizons....” The nightmare continued with her introduction to electroshock. “I was given the new electric treatment, and suddenly my life was thrown out of focus. I could not remember. I was terrified. I behaved as others around me behaved. I who had learned the language, spoke and acted that language. I felt utterly alone. There was no one to talk to... you were locked up, you did as you were told or else, and that was that... I was ‘there for life.’” The treatment left her “in terror and despair equivalent to an execution.” atrick White, Australian winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, once described award-winning New Zealand author Janet Frame as “... the most considerable New Zealand novelist yet.” In a career spanning over forty years, Frame created such successful works as The Lagoon, Scented Gardens for the Blind, Owls do Cry and To the Is-Land. As a gifted wordsmith and an acute observer of life hungry to express herself, it was no surprise that she chose to write about her own remarkable life. With her autobiography, An Angel At My Table, her unique artistry and strength was only further in evidence, as she managed to turn seven years of a harrowing, personal nightmare into a work of beauty, compassion and subtle humor. While a young student at an university, “[H]er shyness and insecurity made her ‘different’ and this, coupled with a clumsy suicide attempt, led to the first of her incarcerations in a mental hospital.” Originally diagnosed as suffering from “schizophrenia,” Frame wrote about her experience: “The six weeks I spent at Seacliff Hospital in a world I’d never... thought possible, became for me a concentrated course in the horrors of insanity.... From my first moment there I knew that I could not turn back to my usual life or forget what I saw.... Many patients confined in other wards... had no name, only a nickname, no past, no future, only an imprisoned Now, an eternal Is-Land without its accompanying horizons....” The nightmare continued with her introduction to electroshock. “I was given the new electric treatment, and suddenly my life was thrown out of focus. I could not remember. I was terrified. I behaved as others around me behaved. I who had learned the language, spoke and acted that language. I felt utterly alone. There was no one to talk to... you were locked up, you did as you were told or else, and that was that...