Alex Miller: The Ruin of Time (2014)

Robert Dixon. Alex Miller: The Ruin of Time. NSW: Sydney UP, 2014. 229 pp. AU$40.00 ISBN: 9781743324073 (Pbk) http://purl.library.usyd.edu.au/sup/9781743324073In Alex Miller: Ruin of Time, Robert Dixon continues the work of his edited collection The Novels of Alex Miller (2012), which emerged from a symposium dedicated to the author in 2011. I've read all of Miller's novels, and Dixon's book elevates their achievement, giving them a far greater coherence. While chapters are usually dedicated to a single work (sometimes two), making it easy to find his commentary on a particular novel, Dixon rewards the reader of the oeuvre as a whole, particularly as he progresses: details and connections back to previous novels begin to spring from every one of Miller's characters or themes. Dixon writes: 'The relationship between Alex Miller's novels often suggest to me the techniques of relief and intaglio, as if the material that is removed by incising to make the positive image of one novel later provides the substance for another' (155). Dixon's ability to find productive lines of connection between all of Miller's novels is perhaps the most valuable aspect of this work. The chapters on the more recent novels Lovesong (2009), Autumn Laing (2011), and Coal Creek (2013) also fill-out a critical picture that has, in recent years, made Miller the subject of considerable critical interest.The contextual details supplied by Dixon range from ancient hunting manuals to the intriguing nature of the relationship between a great Australian visual artist and his benefactors. One of the salient aspects of The Ruin of Time is the way Dixon places Miller's work within the cosmos of world literature, at different stages linking his novels to fiction writers as diverse as Sebald, Rimbaud, Dante, Hardy, Lawson and Patrick White. Dixon's discussion encompasses the diverse influences and references used by Miller, such as Edward, Duke of York's Master of Game (background to the hunting traditions described in The Tivington Nott (1989)), Samuel Smiles's The Lives of Engineers (the historical context of Conditions of Faith (2000)) and artist Walker Sickert's Camden Town series (the conceptual influence behind the dynamics of looking in The Sitters (1995)). Such an orientation at once locates Miller as a writer of world literature, while at the same time emphasising his contribution to and development of uniquely Australian themes and concerns.The many resonances between real life and fiction emphasized by Dixon greatly enrich his thoughtful critical readings of Miller's work. Many of these links are unexpected, almost delightful, whether they involve fictional characters having the same name as people from Millers' life, or characters in different novels sharing some thematic or historical relation, or intertextual links to other writers, works, or ideas. There are many instances to choose from but my favourite is the link between the 'rediscovery' of Patrick White's papers in 2006 and Autumn Laing, where the title character claims, like White, to have burned biographical papers in an effort to efface and control. Despite this, in an 'Editor's Note' at the end of the novel, Adeli, Autumn's biographer, says that Autumn in fact helped her with the papers, almost collaborating with her in the writing of the fictional biography of Autumn and her bohemian group. …