Strong, with serious caveats.

Ken Gelder and Paul Salzman collaborated on their 1989 volume [b:The new diversity: Australian fiction, 1970-88|1285725|The new diversity Australian fiction, 1970-88|Ken Gelder|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1605184272l/1285725._SX50_.jpg|1274794] which was, and remains in my opinion, a seminal volume on Australian literary writing in the late 20th century. The book covers an invigorating period in our history, as the culture, economy, and outlook of the country changed remarkably rapidly following a fairly static period since WWII. It manages to have something to say on basically every fiction writer of note during the years 1970-88 (with the exception of 'genre fiction', which is rectified in this sequel).

In 2008, the pair reunited to write this volume, covering the next 18 years in Australian fiction. It was an equally interesting period in the country, as the policies of globalisation, multiculturalism, and expansiveness set forward in that early period were responded to, in ways both positively and negatively, largely by the John Howard government during its 11 year tenure. This text is also handy, but I'm not sure it can challenge the original, even with an older and wiser writing duo at the helm.

There are many strengths to After the Celebration, make no mistake. However Diversity's greatest strength was that it had the rigor and imprimatur of academia, while remaining readable by all, with its focus on cataloguing and discussing as many novelists and novels as possible. By contrast, Celebration is a straightforwardly academic work - some chapters began their lives as articles or papers - and this leads to some challenges. The first volume's structure was built around eleven categories, exemplifying the movements in fiction of the time, into which each book was sorted. The second volume, by contrast, has only six chapters (one of which is genre fiction) with quite specific themes, meaning a lot of the roughly 250 works mentioned in the book are, truly, mentioned: given one or two sentences as parallels to the main novels under discussion. The first volume eschewed specific source citations in favour of a generous biography; the second is littered with hundreds of end citations. The first volume wasn't afraid to discuss comparative quality where necessary, but for the most part focused on what the books themselves were saying; the second volume instead often focuses on what they're not saying.

What I mean by this is that an academic paper, in contrast to a generalist synoptic overview, has to have a hypothesis and approach. The first two chapters - on books with environmental themes and books related to colonialism, respectively - use the term "critical reading" in all its possible meanings. Tim Winton's landmark Cloudstreet is largely dismissed because, although it is celebrated for its working-class characters, the writers feel they are not truly "working-class" because they don't have connections to the organised labour movement. Murray Bail's Eucalyptus is discredited for not engaging with Aboriginal themes despite being set on the land. I would say that most novels get a fairly rough ride this time around, often with more focus on whether a work meets the arbitrary standard set by the particular essay's viewpoint than with what the author was trying to convey. Both Peter Carey and Robert Drewe's novels about Ned Kelly are examined primarily through the lens of "yet another book about a white heterosexual male hero", for example. (Indeed, the authors who are most praised seem to be those where internal wars are playing out; Kate Grenville is rewarded for The Secret River seemingly largely because other academics criticised her for it!)

I make these statements tentatively, because Gelder and Salzman are luminaries in the field, and know what they're talking about. They're perfectly entitled to take these views of the books, and I'm partly just disappointed because I would've preferred a more typical volume, like Diversity, that examined as many novels as possible in a straightforward fashion. But there is something frustrating here. A heckuva lot of novels were published in the years (immediately following the Bicentenary) that looked at the relationship of white Australians with the land, often with a tone of either redemption or of finding a true home. This is a considerable shift from the often-dislocated focus of novels that were chronicled in Diversity which surely says something fascinating about where we are (were) as a nation. Although it's changing rapidly, 80% or more of Australians still identify as white, and have a range of varying, often long-standing relationships to this grant land. If these novels were being written, and in some cases selling quite well, they must have spoken to sentiments that can be traced to cultural shifts and trends. Instead, there is a vague sense of superiority here, as if Gelder and Salzman have figured out the "correct" way to view Australia, and writers can either live up to that or earn a spanking.

Again, I don't intend any of this as criticism. It is the nature of an academic paper, and that's what we have here. They didn't feel like doing another book of standard literary analysis, and that's their choice. But where I still pull Diversity off the shelf fairly regularly, for research or to check a fact, I suspect Celebration will be among the also-rans. ( )