Edition 13
The Next Big Thing
- Published 5th September, 2006
- ISBN: 9780733319389
- Extent: 288 pp
- Paperback (234 x 153mm)
A major new essay by Creed O’Hanlon will start many arguments. He questions the real influence of the Boomers. He suggests that rather than being the social conscience of the twentieth century, they deliberately co-opted and distorted youth culture and turned it into a commodity, packaging dissent as readily as community, music or fashion.
He challenges Baby Boomers to “fess up” to their own greed and caution, acknowledge the role of the Silent Generation and prepare for big changes.
The Next Big Thing is the result of a call for new and emerging writers to describe the world as they see it and live it now.
The voices are fresh and exciting, the insights challenging and moving, the writing outstanding.
This edition celebrates some of the best new talent in Australia. It is witty, insightful and provocative.
In this Edition
Being political now
IN THE BEGINNING was the '60s. Or so we're told – the culture wars can be traced back to the second wave of feminism, the pill, traditions fractured, authority called into question. A lot of symbolic weight for a decade to bear, and its...
The lure of the domestic
CONVERSATIONS ABOUT AUSTRALIAN society with visitors of a certain political stripe inevitably end at the same point. No matter their background – whether it is an Iranian pro-democracy activist or a French university student – after hearing low-level grumbling about local politics, they ask:...
Raggedy men
WAR IS BIG business and I am at a conference about the business of war. It's being held on the Gold Coast, near Jupiter's Casino, deep in the belly of Baby Boomer avarice. An enormous banner hangs above the entrance to the conference proclaiming...
Life study
I USED TO be in love with Tracey Emin. She was bold, self-made and bolshie, and she didn't care what anyone thought of her. I fell out of love when she stopped making her art herself and began writing about being a celebrity for The...
Revenge of the geeks
THE TOMORROW PEOPLE now seems very "yesterday". It is fondly remembered as a poor man's Doctor Who – and as Doctor Who was notoriously cheap, that's not saying much. Yet when The Tomorrow People was produced in the 1970s, children adored it. They forgave (or were oblivious to) the laughable production...
Beyond the daydream, the reality
THANKS TO THE devotion of women's magazines and television cameras, the Mary Donaldson fairytale is well known: Tassie girl meets spunky prince in a Sydney bar, falls in love, has a makeover, becomes a princess and gives birth to the future king of Denmark....
How feminism lost its street cred
'I'M NOT A feminist" is the first line of many a contemporary discussion of gender. The disclaimer isn't even followed by a "but" any more. Even purportedly progressive, youth-oriented publications distance themselves from the f-word. Instead, dragged across the pages of magazines like VICE are women's...
Everyday violence
A FRIEND OF mine who suffered from schizophrenia once told me of her intention to write a travel guide to the world's psychiatric hospitals. This plan both was and wasn't a joke: travel guides necessarily assume a certain agency on the part of the...
Confusions of an economist’s daughter
Dad wore his “It’s time” badge with its rusted pin to our small country school to vote. He wore it to irritate the National Party voters and Christian fundamentalists whose community was ours. But it was important not to be selfish, our parents said, so we were a Labor-voting family. We were lucky because life was comfortable, but others were not so lucky and deserved a break.
Once a professional token youth
IT'S OFFICIAL. AS of August 2006, my last youth-related engagement ends. For nearly a decade, I have worked on youth-related arts and media projects – often cynically describing myself as a "professional token youth". Having reached my early thirties that description has reached its...
Mac attack
BACK IN THE very early '90s, McDonald's is still number one. Before Nandos and Subway and juice bars, and Sushi Trains and fancy delis and alfresco dining. Before cardboard salads and Super Size Me and pistachio gelati, Maccas is still the thing. The big "M", the...
Just passing through
I MET A hippy on the road to Port Vila. His pale dreadlocks set him apart from the other whitey tourists who more commonly sported braided hair and irregular tans. It was Saturday morning and I was walking home from the market, laden with...
Lopping tall poppies
I WANT TO play God Only Knows at my wedding. A weird confession perhaps, but when you write books with swear words in the title, are told you hate Baby Boomers and are introduced as though "controversial" is your first name, you take refuge where you...
Developing a Rimbaud complex
No one is serious at seventeen.– Arthur Rimbaud LIKE MANY CHILDREN born in the 1980s, I grew up mostly with the aid of the one-eyed babysitter. In those days, "cuddly" was the driving word in children's television. Well, to be honest, there were two driving...
The last time I saw Grant
I WAS SCROUNGING for records in a little store in Brisbane's West End the last time I saw Grant. We were both regulars there and it was no surprise at all to see him wander in, bending to pick up a street magazine at...
Halfway through the days of our lives
A FEW WEEKS ago, I almost killed my baby. I was driving out of Brisbane's CBD, on a steep downhill slope towards the expressway in the morning rain, when my brakes failed. With my car hurtling like a pinball from one side barrier to...
Mending a broken link
I'M CELEBRATING MY mother. Pink tissue paper and ribbon fold and tie over the gift: foot lotion. Lavender scented. A present for the Mother's Day I usually forget. The last few years have been celebrated with a phone call in the late afternoon, just...
The Australian way
THE MORNING AFTER the Cronulla riot dawned cool, calm and clear. Early light caught surfers lolling on the small swell and picked out twinkles of mica in the footpaths along the esplanade. The sand had already been raked clean and a soothing breeze rolled...
The vulnerability threshold
"WE TELL OURSELVES stories in order to live." So begins The White Album, Joan Didion's collection of essays about the 1960s. If the '60s were about imposing a new narrative on events – constructing a story out of the times (women burning bras, men burning...
Not just any job
IT IS EITHER the best of times or the worst of times to be a young worker in Australia. For the lucky ones with skills to sell and the confidence and experience to negotiate a high price for their labour, there are rich pickings...
They’re not stupid girls
Maybe if I act like that, that guy will call me back,What a paparazzi girl, I don't wanna be a stupid girl,Baby if I act like that, flipping my blonde hair back,Push up my bra like that, I don't wanna be a stupid girl. IN...
No ordinary ham
Selected for Best Australian Stories 2006I NEVER DID find out what Jimmy saw in that meat – Jimmy's a weird one. All I know is he barges in and shouts: "Boris! We have just three days to eat this ham!"Now, my name's Jake, not...
Every two seconds
SOMEBODY DIES EVERY two seconds, and then every two seconds somebody is born. It's what Mum told me when my rabbit died. And I'm thinking and it's too quiet, so I say it now that somebody dies, I say it aloud, and Julia lets...
Tactics
Selected for Best Australian Stories 2006IN THE '80s I was in love with Robert Smith. I also hoped against all rumour that Morrisey's croon was for me. Before that it was the boy from our local grocery store, the one who helped shift the...
Indelible ink
Selected for Best Australian Stories 2006SHE WAS FIFTY-NINE, rich, divorced for a year, and out alone on a Saturday night. She told the taxi driver to head for the Cross; she wanted to do something different, and she decided on the bar where Leon...
Is your history my history?
I NEVER MET my grandfather, but we keep his skull on the top shelf of the hutch, behind two Toby mugs, an insulator from the old telegraph system and a soccer trophy awarded "For Participation 1990". I reach over this dusty clutter and touch...
Soliloquy for one dead
THAT THEY WERE both named Nigel is a distant memory, flotsam fading away. For now, it's the smells of barbecues and cut grass that blow their way, the adventure that lies ahead. These two friends, Jim and Joe, leave their homes and chores behind...
Lowlife
THE APARTMENT IS his again. She's gone – he's sure of it. They cooked up a storming fight over the long weekend. Booze, sex, boredom. Two days of that, and she reckons she's leaving. He needs to sleep this one off.Twelve hours later Dan...
Flinch
Society is concerned to tame the Photograph, to temper the madness which keeps threatening to explode in the face of whoever looks at it. – Roland BarthesI am writing blindly. – Dmitry Kolesnikov in a note to his wife from the sunken Russian submarine KurskAugust 2000 TWO HUNDRED...
Requiem
Selected for Best Australian Stories 2006ON MARCH 11, 2004, Fresneda walked down the street outside El Pozo station in Madrid. It was a beautiful spring day and Fresneda was feeling good. He had come to Madrid on holidays to stay with his sister and...
Emily
Selected for Best Australian Stories 2006IN ORDER TO get my novel published, I told book publishers Allen & Unwin that I was the reincarnation of Emily Brontë.I know it sounds ridiculous, but I really wanted to get their attention. I didn't want to be...
Featured Contributors
Fiona Kelly McGregor
Fiona Kelly McGregor has written for a variety of publications including The Sydney Morning Herald, HEAT, Sydney Review of...
Andrew Stafford
Andrew Stafford is a freelance journalist and the author of Pig City (UQP, 2004; third edition 2014), a book about Brisbane,...
Sally Breen
Sally Breen is the author of The Casuals (2011) and Atomic City (2013), and is senior lecturer in writing...
Tara June Winch
Tara June Winch is a Wiradjuri writer. Her critically acclaimed work includes Swallow the Air (UQP, 2006), After the...
