So, I fairly chewed through Christos Tsiolkas' The Slap - which in itself is a good sign. I don't know about you, but I tend to .... dawdle ... when I'm not enjoying a book.
Tsiolkas writes about modern Australia, kids, parenting, intern-generational misunderstandings, culture shifts, especially in migrant communities. Wow, that's like, relevant n' shit to my life, and I could relate. Its not rocket science really is it? I don't mean to belittle his achievements by saying that - but it has to be said that not every modern Australian author gets this wee marketing trick. Importantly, I feel, he doesn't take the the modern obsessions with work and parenting as some sort of given, but as a culture to be written about.
Plus, as its happens, I live in the suburb in which it is primarily set.
Anyway, I liked it. That said, I do believe the chapters are of varying quality, depending on how far the author is from the characters themselves. In my humble and ill-informed opinion, the three chapters on the Greek-Australian male characters are absolute masterpieces of contemporary Australian writing.
The chapter on the older character Manoli I found especially moving. Growing up as a lad in West End, Brisbane, my best friends were Greek-Aussie kids. I always found their parents utterly mystifying, actually. I could never get a slightest bead on where they were coming from, with anything really. Nor did I understand the deep political splits within Greek Australia either, until I was older, and worked out that the first-generation socialists and royalists truly hated each others guts - and that was why there were three Greek clubs in West End (one for each faction, and then the "Greek club" - where the rule was you couldn't talk politics). The Manoli chapter had me right back in the Kokoris household - with an inkling of what my friends' parents must have been thinking the whole time. Thanks for that, Christos T - it actually meant a lot to this Skip to revisit all that through your eyes.
That said, I have some minor quibbles. To be honest, I'm not sure the female character chapters work as well - and maybe that's about the author's distance from those characters. Secondly, I found the Hugo character a bit exaggerated. He's like the worst 10 behaviours you've ever seen from any 4 year old rolled into one 'strawboy' character. This has the unfortunate side-effect of prompting something of a "moral panic" style inquisition of modern parenting which is - frankly - hyperbolic. I might move in certain circles, etc, but I find modern parents far more reflexive, ironic, and plain disciplinarian than Tsiolkas allows for the purposes of this book. But what the hay - inflating the issue allows him to investigate a theme that is without doubt interesting and engaging. Good writers should be agents provocateurs, no?
5 comments:
'The Manoli chapter had me right back in the Kokoris household - with an inkling of what my friends' parents must have been thinking the whole time.'
OMG, now I really do have to read it. I need to know what the Katsaros, Sarantaugas and Bolkus parents were thinking in 1968. I didn't think I did, but now I do.
Yes Pav - if you also had childhood relationships with Greek Australians, I think it will open your eyes to something much more complex and interesting than you could then perceive, Pav. I found the Manoli chapter utterly engrossing. And the Harry chapter made me piss myself laughing several times. Its gold. I wished the the whole was about Hector, Harry and Manoli, actually.
...'whole *book* was about Hector...', that is.
On this point, I ceased having Greek-Australian friends after puberty. It was suddenly like we had nothing in common, and our respective cultures had settled upon us in some mutually exclusive way. I remember being quite sad about it, at first. I wonder if thats a common experience?
I encountered Greeks only after we'd moved to the city (that, hitting puberty and starting high school all happened within about a month of each other) and I'd settled down and sorted through various potential friends at an inner city school where European immigrants and immigrants' children almost outnumbered the Skips, which we weren't yet called.
So for me the experience of having Greek friends = growing up, which had something to do with realising the world was a very big place full of people who were different from me. And from each other: the schism in the Greek community that you mention was only dimly apparent to the rest of us -- the kids didn't want to talk about it, and avoided each other -- but manifested itself in each family's choice of church. (Adelaide, wouldn't you know.) It was my first practical lesson in Not Homogenising the Other.
Interesting Pav. When I was 19, I used to be a barman at Brisbane's Greek Club. Some great nights I witnessed - nobody does dinner quite so plate-smashingly as the Greeks. My best mate there was Italian - pushed together by being equally on the outer. It was a tight scene there for the local Greeks - a lot of "business" was done, above and below board.
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