Barry Dickins

Diary | July 2001 – Barry Dickins

July 2001, no. 232 • 01 July 2001

I speak well crook. I speak better, when better. And I get bitter when my usually unstoppable health chucks it during an author tour. This happened to me the other week in Geelong, when the State Library of Victoria had Chris Beck and me as their travelling wits. Chris Beck is my favourite photojournalist and straight-seeming journalist, so it was a groove for him to contradict me in public libra ... (read more)

Barry Dickins reviews 'Scribbling in the Dark' by Barry Oakley

July 1986, no. 82 • 01 July 1986

This dainty, delicate, savage book is lovely and rare because it is truthful, vicious, brimming with the blue eyes of memory, the red eyes of defeat, the open mouth and congo drum of childhood. When Barry Oakley writes of his childhood, it is you booting him the footy of laughter. He writes, wonderfully, sweetly, dreamily of taking his sore-footed mum and soft-drink-eyed son for the satiric day t ... (read more)

'Confessions of an Unrepresented Literary Man' by Barry Dickins

July 1988, no. 102 • 26 August 2022

I’m unrepresented but still resented. By the regular writers of the pulp I contribute to to keep me and mine from the pawnbrokers; by the witless screenwriters’ minders who know how to quote Lawson, but only in jest; by the rank & file plodders who hate the public, and most of all loathed by academics who have a sort of vision of blue collar, but mix it up with art. Who could represent me ... (read more)

'Self Portrait' by Barry Dickins

April 1986, no. 79 • 01 April 1986

It is Sunday and that is all it is. I have just read the Australian. It is not Australian. It is The Cringe. I have struggled to like Phillip Adams for years; I liked him when he was Phillip Adams – I guess he did too. He worships Mammon when he once seemed to worship cries in the street and whispers from above. No God in him. ... (read more)

Barry Dickins reviews 'The D Generation Bumper Book of Aussie Heroes' by John Alsop, Santo Cilauro, Tom Gleisner, Andrew Knight, Rob Sitch, and Magda Szubanski

August 1987, no, 93 • 01 August 1987

It’s finally happened. I’m not funny. All my life I’ve been told I’m a ratbag. I’m a maniac. I need help. I see life different. Hint of lunacy in the blood. Touch of madness in the haircut. Dickins, he’s crazy. Dickins, he thinks like the turn-off to Shepparton. And generally I have to say I’ve agreed with the general view; the consensus is, always has been, that Barry Dickins is a ... (read more)

Barry Dickins reviews 'A Dictionary of Australian Colloquialisms' by G.A. Wilkes

June 1986, no. 81 • 01 June 1986

It is impossible to know who first said, ‘Get your end in!’ but that is probably the only normal colloquialism of ours left out of this beaut (if you’ve got about forty bucks) book. Clearly, G. A. Wilkes has had his end in; we all have, haven’t we? But Australia’s greatest saying is not included. Perhaps it is Welsh. I’m buggered if I could have summoned up the bloody patience to wad ... (read more)