The Outsider

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Newman, Paul. Murder as an Antidote for Boredom: the novels of Laura Del Rivo, Colin Wilson and Bill Hopkins (1996), Nottingham: Paupers' Press ISBN 0-946650-57-8 Director Jason Figgis and co-producer John West hope to get a TV network interested in screening the documentary, and say a DVD/Blu-ray release is also a possibility. There are also two further stand-alone episodes featuring admirers of Wilson's work, including Gary Lachman and Uri Geller. John said: 'I'm very proud both to have written material for the series and acted as one of the producers. I've been an admirer of Colin's work since I was a teenager and I'm very happy that the series is ready to be shown to the public for the first time. It's our hope that it will bring an appreciation of Colin's work to a whole new generation.'

Jason and John have aimed at a 'comprehensive history' of Wilson’s life, from his early days as a disaffected teenager to the success of The Outsider and Wilson’s unexpected celebrity, to his later career as a leading philosopher of consciousness and his last days as a grand old man of English letters. Stanley, Colin (ed). Colin Wilson, a celebration: essays and recollections (1988), London: Cecil Woolf ISBN 0-900821-91-4

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For me reading these examples and Wilson's insight's made the book. They also made me hate Wilson at times, since at 22 years old is better read then I am at 33, and that he was able to come up with all of this while I was writing silly rants in punk zines. I'm very envious. Farson's enthusiasm for Wilson had to carry his far less impressed opinion of the other writers he roped into membership of this supposed generation: Kingsley Amis; Michael Hastings, then 18, who was about to have his first play performed; and, in a desperate cast-around for any other at-all-visible talents at a lean time, John Osborne, whom Farson noted seemed to be "an angry young man". A fortnight later, the Daily Express replied with its own feature, taking the same four writers and turning the phrase into a plural - Wilson, Osborne, Amis and Hastings were, shouted the headline, "Today's Angry Young Men". How awful,' I murmur, resolving to avoid the subject of non-pessimistic existentialism at all costs. Life’s no picnic, but by refusing to rail at the rain that SPOILS it... we MUST learn to smile away the pain. The people who were always there for us in the past are a very good reason to smile.

A new six-part film documentary about the life and works of Colin Wilson was premiered during the third International Colin Wilson Conference in Nottingham, UK, on September 3, 2023. Wilson followed The Outsider with six philosophical titles, which have become known as The Outsider Cycle: Religion and the Rebel (1957), The Age of Defeat ( The Stature of Man in the U.S., 1959), The Strength to Dream (1962), Origins of the Sexual Impulse (1963), Beyond the Outsider (1965) and the summary volume Introduction to the New Existentialism (1966). These were accompanied by a string of novels aimed at putting his philosophical ideas into action. There was a time when to convict a thinker of absurdity was to place him under an inteltellectual obligation to rise to the argument or change his position. At the very least, it put him in the shadow of impropriety. Today he can escape the obligation and get out from under the shadow by calmly making a philosophy of his predicament. Existentialism as a philosophy of the absurd is the 20th century’s gift to literary men and critics who are terribly excited by ideas but resent the discipline ncessary to analyze them. Mr. Colin Wilson is caught up in this excitement about existentialist profundity. One can plead for him the extenuations of youth and a desultory philosophical education. What is truly astonishing is that he has infected with his enthusiasm for the dramatic and the murky some English critics from whom one had expected more intellectual sophistication. 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.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'. 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. Skidelsky, Robert Oswald Mosley p.503, p.511, Lodestar No.1-Winter 1985/86, No.4-Autumn/Winter 1986, No.7-Winter 1987/88, No.8-Spring 1988, No.9-Summer 1988, No.11-Spring 1989, 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.”