COLIN WILSON

Colin Henry Wilson (1931-     ) is an eccentric English writer. Many of his non-fiction books are not to my taste. They are about crime, magic and sexual deviation. They seem trivial, even stupid.

But a few are valuable and intriguing . . .

Wilson's first non-fiction book, The Outsider in 1956, made him famous. But after The Outsider Wilson attempted to write an ambitious number of related works -- five more -- to make up what he called the Outsider Cycle. He finished the cycle with Beyond the Outsider in 1964.

The five additional books, however, were badly received. The same critics who found The Outsider fascinating and valuable, denounced the other works. Critics dismissed Wilson as a flash in the pan who, after The Outsider -- which all admired -- had lowered himself to trivial concerns.

What had Wilson actually done in the Outsider cycle?

The six books are about various aspects of a number of related problems in what I would call human reality -- what has often been termed the human condition. I have only read two of the books -- the first and last -- so perhaps I am not qualified to say much. But I have read others of his works. I esteem some of his books highly. In the Outsider Cycle I think Wilson was on to something.

I know nothing about how Wilson is currently appraised as a thinker. I am not interested in some of his books, and I have reservations about most. Still, primarily because of the Outsider Cycle, Wilson himself cannot be dismissed.

Why? What was The Outsider about?

The Outsider was about a figure who appears in much of 19th century literature. This is a person who is, somehow, an outcast from society. Often he (for it is nearly always a he) seems to choose his own inner exile. Usually the Outsider is a sensitive with unusual intelligence alienated from bourgeois culture by his vision and sensitivity. He is often anti-capitalistic and anti-materialist. Just to name some of the Outsiders in 19th century literature is to reveal the power of the pattern Wilson had noticed. Clearly, he had touched a nerve.

In the novels and stories of the 19th century Wilson analyzes the many forms the Outsider archetype takes. The Outsider turns out to be a forerunner of the existential heroes of the novels of French philosopher and novelist Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) and French novelist Albert Camus (1913-1960).

In the concluding book of the Outsider cycle, Beyond the Outsider, Wilson attempted to revivify the philosophy of existentialism. You may recall that after a brief burst of intellectual popularity after World War II, existentialism -- the tendency within philosophy in recent centuries to gravely analyze the very real situation of human beings in the world -- had been intellectually dismissed in the English-speaking world, especially in the version popularized by Sartre.

But, as I argued elsewhere, existentialism cannot be so dismissed. It is as perennial a tendency in human life as the wind and the rain. Only a particular formulation of existentialism can be rejected as inadequate.

Wilson knew this. In Beyond the Outsider he postulated a new, more rational and more optimistic existentialism.

(Existentialism, by the way, has if anything resurged in North America through continuing and perhaps increasing interest and controversy in the work of German philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976). Although not in his own eyes an existentialist, Heidegger gave an analysis of human existence in his 1927 book Being and Time which remains among the most influential passages in 20th century philosophy.)

Wilson is particularly good at understanding the psychological underpinnings and supports of philosophies. In Beyond the Outsider and Poetry and Mysticism (1971) he analyzes the human mind. In Poetry and Mysticism he explains the human unconscious and what he calls "instinct" ( I tend to use the word "intuition" for this phenomenon) with great acuity and clarity. And he gives some sense of the contrast between Romantic literature of the 19th century, with what he calls its "soothing melancholy" and the mentally tougher, more optimistic literature of, for example, the Irish poet William Butler Yeats (1865-1939).

Wilson's book The Occult (1971) is a thoroughgoing and, for me, fascinating exploration of the history and structure of occult movements. My one objection to The Occult is that Wilson occasionally seems credulous about some of the "facts" of the history of these movements. In fact, this is the chief fault in all his work -- that Wilson believes in too much of the hooey postulated by occultists of all kinds.

Wilson has written some 60 books since The Outsider. Of these many have been devoted to exploring the history and nature of crime, especially sex-crime; psychic and occult phenomena; and the afterlife. With the exception of The Occult, I have for the most part ignored this part of his work.

Wilson also wrote several science-fiction novels, notably The Mind Parasites and Spider World (in two parts). I have not read them. Science fiction by non---science-fiction writers is usually atrocious. (For example, see the science fiction novels, beginning with Shikasta, of British writer Doris Lessing (1919-     ). Ask yourself: Does Lessing begin to comprehend the enormous difference of scale between a constellation and a galaxy? Why does she think an advancing planetary Ice Age would be halted by . . . a human-built wall?)

I do recommend Wilson's fascinating novel The Philosopher's Stone. Although it is many years since I read this book, I remember it as a well written, absorbing existential quest novel.

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Some Books by Colin Wilson

The Outsider Cycle

The Outsider. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1956.

Religion and the Rebel. London.

The Age of Defeat.

The Strength to Dream. London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1963.

Origins of the Sexual Impulse.

Beyond the Outsider. London: Arthur Barker Ltd., 1965.

Other Non-Fiction

Introduction to the New Existentialism.

Rasputin and the Fall of the Romanovs.

Brandy of the Damned.

This is a book of essays about symphonies and their composers.

The Occult: The Ultimate Book for Those Who Would Walk with the Gods. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1971.

Despite the unpromising title, a very entertaining and enlightening book.

Strange Powers. London: Latimer New Dimensions Ltd, 1973.

"Investigates" the psychic abilities of three people.

Poetry and Mysticism. San Francisco: Citylight Books, 1974.

Men of Mystery. London: W.H. Allen & Co., Ltd., 1977.

This, according to the cover blurb, is a "celebration of the occult." It is a gathering, edited by Wilson, of nine essays on occult figures from Nostradamus to the egregious Uri Geller. The introduction and two of the pieces are by Wilson. A good way to find out about these fellows.

Mysteries: An Investigation into the Occult, the Paranormal and the Supernatural.      London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1978.

The Haunted Man: The Strange Genius of David Lindsay. San Bernardino,      California: Borgo Press, 1979.

Lindsay, not much remembered now, was a seminal early 20th-century fantasist who wrote a fascinating, otherworldy one-off dream book in, I think, the 1920s. Was it called A Journey to Arcturus?

A Criminal History of Mankind. 1984. Carroll & Graf (paperback), 1990.

C.G. Jung: Lord of the Underworld. Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, U.K.:         The Aquarian Press, 1984.

Rudolph Steiner: The Man and his Vision. Wellingborough, Northamptonshire,      U.K.; The Aquarian Press, 1984.

Aleister Crowley: The Nature of the Beast. Wellingborough, Northamptonshire,         U.K.: The Aquarian Press, 1984.

Afterlife: An Investigation of the Evidence for Life after Death. London: Harrop      Ltd., 1985.

G.I. Gurdjieff: The War Against Sleep. Wellingborough, Northamptonshire,            U.K.: The Aquarian Press, 1986.

The Mammoth Book of True Crime. Carroll & Graf (paperback).

The Mammoth Book of True Crime II, Carroll & Graf (paperback).

The Misfits: A Study of Sexual Outsiders. London: Grafton Books, 1988.

From Atlantis to the Sphinx: Recovering the Lost Wisdom of the Ancient World.      London: Virgin Books, 1997.

Alien Dawn: An Investigation into the Contact Experience. London: Virgin      Publishing Ltd., 1998.

Novels

Ritual in the Dark.

Adrift in Soho.

The World of Violence.

Necessary Doubt.

The Glass Cage.

The Sex Diary of Gerald Sorme.

The Black Room.

The Philosopher's Stone.

The Mind Parasites. Oakland, California: Oneiric Press, 1967.

The Space Vampires.

Spiderworld: The Tower.

Spiderworld: Delta.

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