Issue Details: First known date: 2022... 2022 Charting Tsiolkas’s Literary Development through Adaptations
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Christos Tsiolkas has occupied an increasingly central position in the contemporary Australian literary and cultural imagination. Starting with his novel Loaded (1995), Tsiolkas’s fiction engages with subject matter that speaks to his personal experience as both a gay man of Greek heritage and a writer concerned with larger social and political issues affecting a multicultural Australia. Examples of recurring themes in Tsiolkas’s fiction include the irreconcilability of Greek and Australian identity, racial and class intolerance, emergent sexual consciousness, and the conflict between familial obligation and individual expression. In contrast to these arguably “reader-friendly” themes—that is, themes that are accessible to a wide and non-specialist audience—Tsiolkas’s early novels (LoadedThe Jesus Man, 1999; and Dead Europe, 2005) possess a subversive edge in how they explore obscenity and social transgression. However, the publication of Tsiolkas’s fourth novel, The Slap (2008), signalled a new phase in his career, in which the formal rawness of his prose and his uncompromising representation of extreme corporeal states gave way to a simplicity in his written expression that mirrored the growing topicality of his subject matter. This change in purpose mirrors the shift in both the reception of Tsiolkas the writer and of his fiction. Prior to The Slap, Tsiolkas was viewed as a “cult figure” who, though of some critical interest, neither captivated the attention of a mainstream audience nor was celebrated by the literary establishment as an “Australian” writer whose fiction reflected purportedly national interests. However, the critical and commercial success of The Slap has ensured that both Tsiolkas and his subsequent fiction have been (re)cast as pivotal sites of commentary on contemporary Australian class and racial politics. Put another way, Tsiolkas’s “increasing visibility … as a public intellectual, if not a literary celebrity”, has resulted in changes to the form, language and subject matter of his novels, and also the ways critics receive and understand his career.' (Publication abstract)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Journal of Australian Studies Christos Tsiolkas and Contemporary Australia—The Outsider Artist vol. 46 no. 1 2022 24308385 2022 periodical issue

    'Christos Tsiolkas is regularly acknowledged as one of the most important writers working in Australia—indeed, the world—today. However, his proclivity for the public essay (in venues such as The Monthly), as well as his willingness to speak out on important social and political issues (such as refugees and marriage equality), casts him not only as an important writer, but also as a critical public figure in contemporary Australia. This collection of articles takes the range of Tsiolkas’s works (both fiction and non-fiction, as well as their television and cinematic adaptations) as their impetus, using these as a model to explore the significance of Tsiolkas’s intellectual contribution to Australian public life. As such, these articles work across genre, across theories, across national and international borders, and across disciplines in order to make clear Tsiolkas’s contemporary significance. Building on recent book-length studies on the author, including Andrew McCann’s Christos Tsiolkas and the Fiction of Critique: Politics, Obscenity, Celebrity (2015) and my own Christos Tsiolkas: The Utopian Vision (2017), what these articles hold in common is an assertion that Tsiolkas’s fiction and non-fiction always and everywhere serve a political and social purpose. As I have argued elsewhere, Tsiolkas’s writing ultimately suggests the ways in which we can shape a better future for Australia.' (Jessica Gildersleeve : Introduction: Christos Tsiolkas and Contemporary Australia—The Outsider Artist)

    2022
    pg. 72-84
Last amended 6 Apr 2022 09:10:29
72-84 Charting Tsiolkas’s Literary Development through Adaptationssmall AustLit logo Journal of Australian Studies
Subjects:
  • Barracuda Belinda Chayko , Blake Ayshford , 2016 series - publisher film/TV
  • Head On Andrew Bovell , Ana Kokkinos , Mira Robertson , 1998 single work film/TV
  • Loaded Kieran Darcy-Smith , 1996 single work film/TV
  • The Jesus Man Christos Tsiolkas , 1999 single work novel
  • Dead Europe Christos Tsiolkas , 2005 single work novel
  • The Slap 2011 series - publisher film/TV
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