Lindsay Barrett

Celebrating the centenary of the birth of the trailblazing African American author, Encounters with James Baldwin is a wide-ranging volume of short essays, reflections, interviews and poetry. This moving collection demonstrates the significant legacy of the writer and activist who spoke truth to power during the era of the fight for Black civil liberties in the US, and after.In this literary anthology, over 30 contributors reveal the influence of Baldwin's thought, speech and writing to their personal journeys and their awareness of the need for social justice.Authors included: Victor Adebowale; Toyin Agbetu; Rosanna Amaka; Michelle Yaa Asantewa; Lindsay Barrett; Eugen Bacon; Gabriella Beckles-Ray; Alan Bell; Selina Brown; Michael Campbell; Fred D’Aguiar; Thomas Glave; Sonia Grant; Zita Holbourne; Rashida Ismaili-AbuBakr; Paterson Joseph; Peter Kalu; Roy McFarlane; Ronnie McGrath; Michael McMillan; Tony Medina; Bill V Mullen; Nducu wa Ngugi; Lola Oh; Ewuare X. Osayande; Nii Ayikwei Parkes; Anton Phillips; Ray Shell; SuAndi; Tade Thompson; Patrick Vernon; Tony Warner.

A group of aimless young blokes from the suburbs of Sydney go troppo in 1980s North Queensland as all around them, men fuelled by the resources boom tear up the landscape with abandon. If Jack Kerouac had been Australian he might have come up with something like North, a tale of Australian masculinity searching for itself, while learning that we need to tread softly on the land if we are to have any sort of a future.

In the late 1930s an apprentice potter made a solemn pledge with some of his young work mates to meet up on New Year's Day, in the year 2000, in the famous Long Bar of the Hotel Australia. But the reunion never took place because, while sixty years later the young man in question, the author's father, was still going strong, the venue was no longer standing. The Hotel Australia, Sydney's premier hotel throughout much of the twentieth century, had been demolished in 1972 to make way for the MLC Centre, a concrete skyscraper which was at the cutting edge of the city's redevelopment as a global business hub.Charting a course through modernist literature, popular fiction, rugby league, shopping centres, suburban kitsch and prefab concrete, this book looks at the impact of the ethic of progress on Australia in the middle of the twentieth century, and the way in which a particular version of masculinity - the self-made man - became enshrined as a new version of Australian identity. At a time when the average tradesman is now a media celebrity, and as property developers scour the urban landscape for profit as never before, New Year's Day at the Hotel Australia looks back at the heyday of the self-made man, and the world he was busy building, even as forces much more powerful than he could muster were in the process of redeveloping it into something much bigger, blander and more corporate.Lindsay Barrett is a writer, cultural historian and curator. He has written on a wide range of aspects of the experience of modern life, including technology, art, sport and politics. His book on the Whitlam Government's purchase of the Jackson Pollock painging Blue Poles has been acclaimed as the definitive cultural history of the event. He was born in Sydney, and some of the things that make up the narrative of New Year's Day at the Hotel Australia he actually witnessed, while others he has only read about in the newspapers.

A crime story, a child's story, a childhood re-examined...

Alive in the hive to the sound of drills. The screeching scrat drones of pop scratching at the paving stones from a house window across the way and a passing car on course for a collision. This sweltering city is a little Chicago. Why, just this month, in commemoration of Julius Caesar, thirty-three people were discovered gunned-down on the steaming streets. Crack gangs invading territories, posses disputing space...Beware! If you are thinking right now of going out for a casual walk start taking to wearing a flak jacket. Better still stay indoors with Dis. Smoke some blow. Drink some red wine, have a good time. Talk and chalk. Go visit chat rooms and discover answers to those lingering questions that pose themselves late at night around about the moment you are falling into sleep...Like how could ten thousand experienced Persian soldiers disappear without a trace in the Sahara Desert?...

You live with it and it's never going to end. You stop expecting anything. Any hopes or dreams have long since disappeared. Each day brings the totally unexpected and is the same. False reports. Little hinted-at canards to dupe the duplicitous...The sand eats into your young bones and you feel as old as the Universe. Nothing ever happened before this...no end in sight...Bravery isn't an act you even contemplate...Everyone shitting themselves before they go into action...You may not fear, but you are still afraid.

The day ahead awaits and framed thoughts are gaining concentrated attention in Valentine Bone's brain. Gradually forcing the inner screen clear of the myriads of flooding images, begging and pleading for his urgent attention. The Director-General and the upcoming mission are being hard-wired into the mind...Steeling himself to be catapulted out from the sanctity of this apartment. The order of unbroken chaos beckons...

Smoke rising from a street cauldron of morning stew. Evil-smelling and nourishing. Each ragged member shuffling forward...taking a wooden bowl of steaming gruel. Roll up, roll up, step right in and spy the Crystal Grotto, linger by the Marionette Theatre...steal a visit to the Hermit's Cave...glorious wonders and excitement...dazzling delights and secrets of the Orient...high above the illuminated gardens you can see a balloon descent twinkling out of the dark, starry night sky...tiers and tiers of supper and pleasure boxes...costumed waiters and bawdy wenches serving the rich and famous...Welcome to the dichotomy that is Cremorne...

Jackson Pollock's Blue Poles was hailed as a masterpiece by Prime Minister Gough Whitlam when it was acquired for a record price by the Australian National Gallery in 1973. But far from being the jewel in Whitlam's cultural crown, the painting became instead a symbol of the Whitlam Government's flamboyance, extravagance, and excess. Both political history and cultural analysis, The Prime Minister's Christmas Card traces the events surrounding the notorious purchase of Blue Poles and the life of the ill-fated Whitlam Government. It provides a fascinating glimpse into Australia's social, cultural, and economic history, its changing class dynamics, and its shifting geo-political status. It also offers a new and original perspective on Australian politics and culture in the Whitlam era.