The Outsider

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He met Joy on one of his countless temporary jobs - he was a Christmas shop assistant and she was in charge of the cash registers. He fell for her immediately, partly because she was middle-class. 'I knew I could never bear a girl who talked with a Leicester accent or with any kind of local accent. And when I heard Joy, I thought "Oh marvellous, that's what I want." And when I asked her, "What books have you got on your shelf?" and she said she'd got Yeats and Ulysses, and Proust in French, I thought, "My God, that's the girl I really want!" Betty didn't read at all.' Wilson is rather like the headmaster of some apalling school who contrives in his innocence and benevolence, to find a good word on even the most outragous of his pupuls. [The Occult] displays, more fully than any other Wilson bok that I have read since The Outsider, the full array of his amiable virtues.” Coulthard, Philip. The Lurker at the Indifference Threshold: Feral Phenomenology for the 21st Century (2019) Nottingham: Paupers' Press ISBN 9780995597822 Salwak, Dale (ed). Interviews with Britain's Angry Young Men (1984) San Bernardino: Borgo Press ISBN 0-89370-259-5

Moorhouse, John & Newman, Paul. Colin Wilson, two essays (1988), Nottingham: Paupers' Press ISBN 0-946650-11-X Stanley, Colin. The Nature of Freedom' and other essays (1990), Nottingham: Paupers' Press ISBN 0-946650-17-9 Dossor, Howard F. Colin Wilson: the man and his mind (1990) Shaftesbury, Dorset: Element Books ISBN 1-85230-176-7 The Outsider is great. Much of the book are things that any serious reader will say the very not so serious comment of 'duh' to, and there is the sense of 'preaching to the converted' (although there is no preaching here), but that's ok with me since a good portion of my life has been being submersed in subcultures that preach to the converted believing that their words just might be able to transcend the actual audience to an audience that needs to hear the message (for the record I just thought this now at 11:22 AM on Sunday January 20th, 2008, and I wish I had thought it sometime ten years ago to counter a lukewarm review I had received from MRR for the eighth issue of my zine. A review that had accused me of preaching to the converted.). But anyway, this book could only have been produced by an 'outsider' himself. Someone standing on the edges of popular and academic writing, but not entrenched in either camp at all. After a major spinal operation in 2011, [24] Wilson suffered a stroke and lost his ability to speak. [25] He was admitted to hospital in October 2013 for pneumonia. He died on 5 December 2013 and was buried in the churchyard at Gorran Churchtown in Cornwall. [5] A memorial service for him was held at St James's Church, Piccadilly, London, on 14 October 2014.

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Sure, I know it hurts, he seemed to say, but what of Dostoevsky and all the Other Outsiders who TURNED THEMSELVES AROUND AND MADE A MAN OF THEMSELVES? As soon as I began to write, I was carried away. Material seemed to fall into my lap. One story that impressed me particularly was told to me by the wife of Scottish poet Hugh MacDiarmid, who happened to be a communist. His wife Valda said that whenever her husband travelled abroad – usually to some place like Moscow or Peking – she always knew when he would be coming home, because their dog would go and sit at the end of the lane for several days in advance. On one occasion, it had known about his return before he did. He thought Joy was unattainable because she was wearing an engagement ring. 'But to my amazement, six weeks later there I was in bed with her. Couldn't get into her, mind - she was a totally impenetrable virgin - but just to lie there kissing and cuddling and feeling her bum through her pants was tremendously exciting. I was absolutely astounded - that was the greatest Peak Experience of my life.' Even my father, who was not particularly interested in my work – being a non-reader – had a sudden intuition that my book would be a success. Stanley, Colin. Colin Wilson's 'Occult Trilogy': a guide for students (2013). Alresford: Axis Mundi Books. ISBN 9781846947063

Stanley, Colin. Colin Wilson's Existential Literary Criticism: a guide for students (2014). Nottingham: Paupers' Press. ISBN 9780956866349 Now, in my 60s, how do I explain it; what was it about The Outsider? Firstly, the naivety, earnestness and honesty of the young Colin Wilson appealed. I was pretty confused about life and I suppose a good deal of projection was involved; I took on the mantle of outsider as I felt I didn't 'fit in' - I suspect this was true of other fans. I've since read accounts of people regarding the book as somehow 'unhealthy' (almost demonic) - but perhaps this is because it encourages questioning accepted mores!

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The literary establishment looked on in horror. Their wunderkind was a nincompoop. Philip Toynbee had already provided a throat-clearing apology in his books-of-the-year piece in December ("I doubt whether this interesting and extremely promising book quite deserved the furore which it seems to have caused ..."). If ever there was a book in for a critical hiding, it was the sequel to The Outsider, Religion and the Rebel, published in September 1957. Originally, Wilson focused on the cultivation of what he called "Faculty X", which he saw as leading to an increased sense of meaning, and on abilities such as telepathy and the awareness of other energies. In his later work he suggests the possibility of life after death and the existence of spirits, which he personally analyses as an active member of the Ghost Club. For purposes of philosophical analysis, it is sufficient to show that Mr. Wilson’s “outsiders” and he himself talk nonsense or make inconsistent or self-refuting assumptions. But to stop at that is not very satisfying. We should inquire what makes them talk that way, why they feel that their talk is important, what the actual problems are, if any, that beset them, what they are trying to say about them, and above all what they really want. Nonsense may be important as a diagnostic aid in discovering obscure needs and aspirations. Stanley, Colin (ed). Colin Wilson, a celebration: essays and recollections (1988), London: Cecil Woolf ISBN 0-900821-91-4

Luminously intelligent . . . A real contribution to our understanding of our deepest predicament.” —Philip Toynbee Published to immense acclaim in the mid-1950s, The Outsider helped make popular the literary concept of existentialism. Authors like Sartre, Kafka, Hemingway, and Dostoyevsky, as well as artists like Van Gogh and Nijinsky, delved for a deeper understanding of the human condition in their work, and Colin Wilson’s landmark book encapsulated a character found time and time again: the outsider. I particularly enjoyed his account of how, as a panty-fetishist and visiting lecturer at an American university, he contrived to look up his students' skirts with the aid of a glass-bottomed mug. But the story of his struggle to become a writer, and the tenacity with which he stayed one - despite the fact that even his publisher advised him to give up - is heroic and strangely moving. I came to formulate a theory of the occult: that it is a natural faculty we all possess, but have deliberately got rid of because it would be a nuisance. However, above all it set the ball rolling for me to look for deeper truths than the ones conventionally provided by society. So, it had extra-literary consequences, and it is not many books that do that. (This is why I can't be objective and can't simply consider the book as a literary creation.)a b Williamson, Marcus (8 December 2013). "Colin Wilson: Author (Obituary)". The Independent . Retrieved 17 January 2014. It is impossible for me to be objective about this book as it had such an influence on my life! I read it when I was 21 and identified with the outsider theme. It had me reading most of the books this precocious autodidact quoted in his rambling thesis. I was particularly fascinated by his outline of Gurdjieff and this led me to join a Gurdjieff Group, convinced I had found the solution to my problems. I hadn't but that's another story! Tredell, Nicolas. Novels to Some Purpose: the fiction of Colin Wilson (2015) Nottingham: Paupers' Press ISBN 9780956866363

Stanley, Colin (ed). The Sage of Tetherdown: Recollections of Colin Wilson by his friends (2020) Nottingham: Paupers' Press. ISBN 9780995597884

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As a child he was so introverted, so uninterested in other people, he might have been diagnosed today with Asperger's syndrome. 'I wouldn't be surprised. I wasn't cut off from other people, but, as I keep saying in The Outsider, other people were the trouble. They kept intruding into my world whether I wanted them to or not, because what they did was to drag me away from the world of ideas and abstractions I wanted to be in. When I was a teenager I was a total romantic escapist. My world was books. I felt as Axel did in the Villiers de L'Isle-Adam play - 'As for living, our servants can do that for us.' But that all changed when I was 16 and discovered Rabelais. Suddenly I had that wonderful feeling - my God, life is good after all!'