AustLit

'What happens when an autobiographical project is taken up by film? How can visual media extend, distort, and reshape the image of the author? Janet Frame was a writer particularly concerned with modes of authorial representation, both visual and writerly. Her posthumous novel In the Memorial Room (2013) describes the writer Harry Gill's tenure of the Watercress-Armstrong Fellowship in Menton, France. At the reception celebrating his arrival in Menton, he is greeted by Connie Watercress, benefactor of the fellowship, her husband Max and their son Michael, a 'handsome richly bearded young man, the perfect stereotype of the 'young writer''. At this reception, the mayor of Menton approaches the foursome to take a photograph with the new Watercress-Armstrong Fellow - and mistakenly extends his hand to Michael. Though the mistake is immediately recognised, and the mayor sheepishly turns to Harry, it is too late - the photographers have already taken their photo, memorialising the event..  (Introduction)