y separately published work icon Prochownik's Dream single work   novel  
Issue Details: First known date: 2005... 2005 Prochownik's Dream
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Notes

  • Dedication: For Stephanie.
    For the memory of Max Blatt.
  • Epigraph: 'We cannot arbitrarily invent projects for ourselves: they have to be written in our past as requirements' (Simone de Beauvoir).

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • Crows Nest, North Sydney - Lane Cove area, Sydney Northern Suburbs, Sydney, New South Wales,: Allen and Unwin , 2005 .
      Extent: 299p.
      ISBN: 1741142490
Form: audiobook
    • Hawthorn, Camberwell - Kew area, Melbourne - Inner South, Melbourne, Victoria,: Louis Braille , 2006 .
      Extent: 8 hrs., 45 min.p.
      ISBN: 0732031702
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Other Formats

  • Also sound recording.
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Works about this Work

Thought Is Free Yu Ouyang , 2022 single work autobiography
— Appears in: Meanjin , September vol. 81 no. 3 2022; (p. 56-64) Meanjin Online 2022;
The Ruin of Time and the Temporality of Belonging : Journey to the Stone Country and Landscape of Farewell Brigid Rooney , 2012 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Novels of Alex Miller : An Introduction 2012; (p. 201-216) 'At first glance, Landscape of Farewell (2007) appears a simpler, more streamlined story than its predecessor, Journey to the Stone Country (2002). In the first person, Max Otto, a widowed German professor specialising in the history of massacres, tells of his journey to Mount Nebo in Central Queensland, a journey precipitated by his encounter with visiting Aboriginal Australian academic Vita McLelland. His journey is conducted in the context of his not yet assuaged grief for his wife, and of his haunted suspicions about his father's complicity in the horrors of wartime Germany. Peter Pierce (2004) has identified some of Miller's enduring preoccupations: 'solitariness', 'artful evocations of the visceral', tensions between ancestry, freedom and exile, and the indeterminacy of memory. While many of these recur in Landscape, I focus in this paper on how the theme of time is exercised in this novel, with its spare but concentrated prose and apparently straightforward narration. How does Landscape of Farewell draw us inwards as well as onwards, into an intricately nested set of temporalities that speak to selfhood, truth and reparation, to cross-cultural translation, to mortality and relinquishment, and to the intractable terrain of moral debate about the past? What does Miller's mode of narration bring to familiar questions, in Australian culture, of place and belonging?' (Source: http://sydney.edu.au/arts/australian_literature/images/content/conferences/miller_abstracts2.pdf)
An Artist in the Family : Reconfigurations of Romantic Paradigms in Prochownik’s Dream Adrian Caesar , 2012 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Novels of Alex Miller : An Introduction 2012; (p. 101-113) 'Romantic paradigms insist on the necessary loneliness and suffering of the artist. Writing about Beethoven and identifying himself with that composer, D.H. Lawrence wrote of 'the crucifixion into isolate individuality.' Rilke, perhaps a more pertinent example with respect to Alex Miller's work, advises a young poet to 'love . . .solitude and sing out with the pain it causes . . .' Furthermore, Rilke urges his protege to perceive the world from the 'vastness' of his own solitude, 'which is itself work and status and vocation.'

Though there are moments in Prochownik's Dream when one might detect the influence of Rilke, the novel's distinction, I believe, resides in its portrait of the artist as embedded and enmeshed in family. Not only is Toni Powlett and his work seen in relation to his father, wife and daughter, but also in relation to his friends, who constitute another 'family'. My paper seeks to tease out the creative connections and tensions between families and art as they are represented in the novel and to demonstrate the way Prochownik's Dream 3 subverts the Romantic idea of creative genius and insists on the often unacknowledged collaborations necessary to the making of art.' (Source: http://sydney.edu.au/arts/australian_literature/images/content/conferences/miller_abstracts2.pdf )
Alex Miller and Leo Tolstoy : Australian Storytelling in a European Tradition Brenda Walker , 2012 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Novels of Alex Miller : An Introduction 2012; (p. 42-54) 'Alex Miller may be Australia's greatest living writer. I certainly believe this to be the case. I base my view on the depth and range of his narrative preoccupations. He writes about love but his lovers often come from very different cultural backgrounds, and this illuminates what is foundational in love while respecting diversity in the most intimate of human connections. He writes with scrupulousness about the human complications of invasion, massacre and armed conflict. The American novelist Philip Roth writes that art is concerned with nuance, and politics cannot afford nuance (I Married a Communist, 223). Nuance is the most welcome and apparent characteristic of Miller understanding of the politics of territorial dispossession. He writes, also, about art and literature as cultural forces and as imperatives within the lives of individuals. In all his fiction, he is both a great writer and a great thinker. This chapter offers a much more brief appreciation of his work and thought then I would wish, more brief than it deserves. In it, I plan to consider Alex Miller and Tolstoy: both great writers, both great thinkers, especially on matters of love and war.' (Author's introduction 42)
Disestablished Worlds : An Introduction to the Novels of Alex Miller Robert Dixon , 2012 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Novels of Alex Miller : An Introduction 2012; (p. 1-28)
Untitled David Gaunt , 2005 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Bookseller & Publisher , October vol. 85 no. 4 2005; (p. 19)
— Review of Prochownik's Dream Alex Miller , 2005 single work novel
Cliches and Sloppy Work Sink Dream Rebecca Edwards , 2005 single work review
— Appears in: The Courier-Mail , 22 - 23 October 2005; (p. 5)
— Review of Prochownik's Dream Alex Miller , 2005 single work novel
Rough Journey Along the Path to an Artist's Rebirth Ingrid Wassenaar , 2005 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 29-30 October 2005; (p. 10-11)
— Review of Prochownik's Dream Alex Miller , 2005 single work novel
Confronting Canvas in Art-Love Tangle Stephen Saunders , 2005 single work review
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 5 November 2005; (p. 13)
— Review of Prochownik's Dream Alex Miller , 2005 single work novel
The Bearable Past James Bradley , 2005 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , November no. 276 2005; (p. 50)
— Review of Prochownik's Dream Alex Miller , 2005 single work novel
The Miller's Tale Jane Sullivan , 2005 single work biography
— Appears in: The Age , 5 November 2005; (p. 26-27)
Heckler : A Fictional Namesake Proves Disturbing for Kathy Prokhovnik Kathy Prokhovnik , 2005 single work column
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 8 November 2005; (p. 20) The author strongly objects to her family name being used as the subject of the novel Prochownik's Dream by Alex Miller.
Sketches of the Soul Jane Sullivan , 2005 single work column
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 26-27 November 2005; (p. 20-21)
Betrayals of Faith Drusilla Modjeska , 2005-2006 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Monthly , December/January no. 8 2005-2006; (p. 71-73)
Real Revenge in Fictional Debauchery Susan Wyndham , 2006 single work column
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 7-8 January 2006; (p. 19) A column canvassing current literary news.
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Awards

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Last amended 21 Oct 2024 12:54:21
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