The Outsider

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A film of his 1961 novel Adrift in Soho by director Pablo Behrens was released by Burning Films in 2018. Luminously intelligent . . . A real contribution to our understanding of our deepest predicament.” —Philip Toynbee

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? This fascinated me. It obviously did the dog no good whatsoever to know that its master was on his way home. It just sat there. But it clearly possessed some natural faculty of “tuning in”. Alas, as it turned out, Colin Wilson wasn't even a flash in the pan so much as an accident in the kitchen sink, and his preposterous rise and ludicrous fall served only to humiliate an already embattled literary establishment and further discredit their devotion to modernism and all things European.Hodder also decided to issue a pamphlet about me and to increase my advance, which troubled me. After 10 years of poor sales, I was afraid it would lose money. But I was proved wrong. The book was not only widely and respectfully reviewed, but sold excellently. So did the US edition, which immediately went into a Book Club edition. There is an unintentionally funny scene in the autobiography when he decides to spend Christmas Day meditating and is furious when Betty interrupts to ask him to hold the baby. They separated soon afterwards. She reappeared when The Outsider came out, but by then he was in love with Joy. He admits that Betty is 'the one thing that often worries my conscience'. a b Williamson, Marcus (8 December 2013). "Colin Wilson: Author (Obituary)". The Independent . Retrieved 17 January 2014. 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. Stanley, Colin. The Ultimate Colin Wilson Bibliography 1956–2015 (2015) Nottingham: Paupers' Press ISBN 9780956866356

Wilson disagrees. "I suspect that I am probably the greatest writer of the 20th century," he says. "In 500 years time, they'll say, 'Wilson was a genius', because I'm a turning-point in intellectual history.'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. Wilson uses an excellent metaphor to get us out of our pit. He says to just imagine one of our feared primary school teachers telling us to get our act together - PRONTO! Worked for me. Stating the thing broadly, the human individual thus lives far within his limits; he possesses powers of various sorts which he habitually fails to use. He energizes below his maximum, and he behaves below his optimum. In elementary faculty, in co-ordination, in power of inhibition and co ntro l, in every conceivable way, his life is contracted like the field of vision of an hysteric subject — but with less excuse, for the poor hysteric is diseased, while in the rest of us, it is only an inveterate habit — the habit of inferiority to our full self — that is bad.” Ve kitabı özetle yazar şunları bize aktarır; Yabancının sorunu, dünyayı ‘kötümser’ görmeye tekabül eder. Bu kötümserliğin doğru ve haklı olduğunu göstermeye çalıştım. Bu yüzdendir ki kötümserlik ‘ölmüş benliklerinin sıçrama tahtasına basarak yükseklere doğru’ ilerleyen insana dair hümanist idealleri alaşağı eder ve kendini bilmediği takdirde filozofun dünyayı bilmesinin bir anlamı olmadığını söyleyerek felsefeyi eleştirir. İdeal ‘nesnel felsefenin salt düşünürlerce değil, düşünür, şair ve eylem adamının birleştiren insanlar tarafından yaratılacağını söyler. Felsefenin ilk sorusu ‘Evren durup dururken nereden çıktı?’ değil ‘Hayatımızı nasıl yaşamalıyız?’ olmalıdır, amacı entelektüel olarak tutarlı bir sistem değil, bireyin kurtuluşu olmalıdır.