Christos Tsiolkas's Loaded as Grunge Writing

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Christos Tsiolkas's Loaded as Grunge Writing

Grunge writing as described in Ian Sysons lecture and article Smells Like Market Spirit is to be a fad or marketing ploy to cash in on the grunge scene and to have the same properties and appeal as grunge music, which emerged from Seattle’s underground just before the emergence of grunge writing in Australia. The properties of grunge music are raw sound, distorted guitars, contrasting song dynamics, focus on music, rejection of theatrics, inspired by metal/indie/rock/punk, angst filled lyrics, and an appeal towards the disgruntled youth of generation X. Loaded does not fit into the genre of grunge writing in relation to the description of grunge music.

The only reason why Loaded is classified as grunge is because it was released during a convenient time of when grunge music became immensely popular due to the success of bands like nirvana. If it were released at another time or without the existence of grunge music it would have been in a genre called dirty realism, hyperrealism, urban realism, gay fiction or it just wouldn’t be published in the mainstream. It is possible it got labeled grunge in the descriptive context of being dirty because it has descriptions of harsh issues that are not in the norm of modern literature.

Drug references, homosexuality, anonymous homosexual encounters, trans gender characters, cultural/sexual identity, a father’s sexual abuse towards his cross dressing son, place, and swearing are the elements in Loaded, besides the swearing and drug references none of these elements are in grunge music. What exactly makes it grunge? Grunge music is about freedom, being free to do what you want, social discomforts, and social observations/commentary. Loaded on the other hand are 151 pages of subtle complaining since it is difficult to recall him liking anything. The lead character Ari is torn between his cultural and sexual identity, hates conformity, the consumption of drugs to get out of his hated reality, use of music when he has no drugs, coming up with narrow-minded conclusions based on generalizations, and lack of future direction which all doesn’t sound very grunge.

There are many books written well before, after, and during the grunge phase yet are not in the grunge genre, titles such as Fritz The Cat written in many stories during the late 1960s to the early 70s, featured elements such as references to music that inspired grunge, swearing, anonymous sex, place, drug induced orgies, street violence, and a social commentary.

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