29 - Grunge, Nation and Literary Generations

Summary

Christos Tsiolkas’s first novel, Loaded (1995), was hailed as a profound example of the short-lived ‘grunge’ genre in Australia in the late twentieth century, but his work since that point is not typically viewed in that context, nor is that genre generally considered to have continued or evolved since the 1990s. This chapter returns to Tsiolkas’s grunge roots and demonstrates the continuation and evolution of the grunge genre across Tsiolkas’s oeuvre as well as its influence on the work of other contemporary Australian writers. Through comparative discussions of several practitioners of grunge, this chapter examines Tsiolkas’s influence on and development of a critical genre in Australian literary history, arguing that the evolution of Tsiolkas’s grunge and his influence on other grunge writers depends on a simultaneous absorption in and disruption of the myths and identities of the nation in its contemporary literature.